When Spring Comes
by Mission to Marzipan
Summary: A prophecy to end all prophecies. An Oracle stolen in the dead of night. The impossible becomes oh so very possible for Percy and Annabeth just as the world around them starts to fall apart, all centring on one precious new arrival. Will they have to sacrifice family to save the world, or will it be the other way round?
1. January

_January_

* * *

Annabeth had never been one for introspection, not really.

The real mysteries to be solved — not to mention all manner of other interests — were out in the real world and not buried deeply in her psyche, so why would she ever spend time examining each little twinge of feeling inside her?

She was smart enough to know it was unlikely to lead to a happy place and so she wasn't into the whole dark, brooding, emo thing (although she knew a certain son of Hades who still could be in certain circumstances). It was that simple. She had never understood where it would get her — well, not until now, she guessed.

It had ended in her sitting on a park bench wrapped up in about a hundred layers, all of which were proving ineffective against January and all of its bastardry.

Otherwise known as precisely nowhere.

And yet she couldn't stop. The whole situation was going round and round in her head like a nightmarish carousel and, to clash metaphors spectacularly (metaphor cage-fighting, even), it was eating her up inside to boot.

Her breath smoked in front of her as she looked down at her gloved hands. They were clasped in her lap pretty much entirely to quell the sudden need she felt to wring them, because she would not allow herself to stoop to useless handwringing, despite how dire the situation was. She would give herself a lot of leeway in most situations, but handwringing was a heavily-guarded line she would not cross.

Her nose was so cold it hurt. Its intermittent dripping was a fun added bonus. Equally as attractive, she had taken to cuffing it with the shoulder of her coat, because you only ever had tissues with you when you didn't need them. There was absolutely no feeling left in her feet; the pain she had initially felt in her toes had fizzled away into tingling and numbness beyond long ago, although probably only because she was losing them to frostbite.

Gods, how long had she been sitting here?

Enough. She stamped her boot-clad feet and lurched upwards from the bench and started walking, no destination in mind, only the desire to get warm.

When she shoved her hands in her pocket, her left hand closed reflexively around her phone. It had been buzzing and trilling and beeping the entire time she had been sitting here — the office, no doubt, wondering why their star project manager (and the youngest ever at just thirty) had gone out for lunch early and not come back — and she'd been ignoring it. Now, though, she pulled it out. Her gloved thumb fumbled across the track pad.

Emails. Text messages. Voicemails. Stuff she didn't want to deal with right now.

And yet, because technology was nothing but a cruel master, the speed at which she caved was alarming. The little red blipping LED on the top right was really starting to grate on her last nerve as it demanded her attention.

The first text message was from Percy, asking her when she'd be home.

Her heart plummeted towards somewhere near her frozen feet. She shoved the phone back in her pocket, wishing she could go back and pitch it into the Meer, but the surface was frozen so solid it would only sit there and gloat, blinking LED mocking her.

Even as she cursed Malcolm for taking that engineering job with AT&T and secretly upgrading the entire network to remove the threat of imminent monster attacks from cell phone use, she regretted it. It wasn't Malcolm's fault.

And it wasn't Percy's, either. She wasn't mad with Percy, not at all, not by any means. If anything, she was seething at herself. It was just that texts from Percy were something on quite a long list of things she couldn't deal with right now. The news she had heard today was going to be impossible to tell him.

Even the thought of giving it to him was all but killing her.

Annabeth knew Percy so well, knew every square millimetre of his face, and she could already see the expression he would pull when she told him. He wouldn't pull it consciously, of course, but she knew the instant sag of disappointment and concern that would probably be there, and it would no doubt haunt her for some time.

Annabeth Chase had never failed at anything, not once in her life. It wasn't in her nature. And now… Failure had to catch up with her eventually, she guessed, but this was huge, tugging away at her insides huge.

Her feet crunched on the salt and frozen snow as she walked. She was nearly shoved off the path when an insane jogger — wearing shorts, no less, and sporting a pair of blue knees — came flying at her in the opposite direction. It was insanity being out running in these temperatures. What was wrong with letting the layer of insulating winter blubber build up like everyone else did? It worked for seals, didn't it? She paused to dwell on the irony of the fitness fanatic probably getting fatal hypothermia before starting walking again.

Right now, her life with Percy was so damn complete; she had everything she had ever wanted, he had everything they ever wanted, they both lived on this insanely happy cloud where everything was so damn perfect and, according to Nico, so saccharine it made him puke.

They had been married for five years in April, and as far as she was concerned the honeymoon period had never ended. The Plan (capital P, always capital P) for their lives together was meant to be progressing by now, but suddenly there was a brick wall in the road.

It felt like she'd hit it at supersonic speeds.

Something brushed her eyelashes and she blinked. Whatever it was lodged there obscured her vision. She reached up to brush it off and pressed something cold into her eye. Looking up, she realised it had started to snow again. If she'd been paying more attention, she'd have noticed the sky had turned a threatening shade of pearl grey, looming overhead and ready to dump what would probably be another six inches on the city overnight.

With a sigh she pulled her hood up and hunched her shoulders. She had barely walked ten paces before the world in front of her started to swirl white as the snow began to fold itself over the Park.

It was so _cold_ ; it had gone to the very core of her body, down to her bones, and she knew it would take hours to be able to feel properly warm again. San Francisco may be misty, but at least she didn't have to contend with four thousand feet of snow every winter. Although, despite the more temperate climate, not once had she been tempted to return to California since Percy slipped the engagement ring on her finger, since she'd said an emphatic _yes_.

It was as if the brief, snatched memories of her childhood in San Francisco from before she had run away were a completely different life or, rather, someone _else's_ life. The life of a person much, much less fortunate than her. It was thousands of miles literally, but billions of miles figuratively, from the life she had now.

The world in front of her was white. An icy wind blew, finding out every single chink in her heavy, wool-based armour and making her shiver. On her hood, snow dislodged from the trees above her plopped down.

Still she kept walking, being ambulatory apparently better for her brain than sitting morosely on a bench and indulging in a little bit of wallowing in the self-pity mud pool. Plus, you know, hypothermia and all. Even though the snow was blinding her, it felt like she had a purpose this time, somewhere to go, even if she didn't know quite where yet.

She took out her phone again, shielding it from the driving snow with one hand and checking through the recent calls with the other. Work had phoned three times on various different numbers and then, right underneath that, was the tailspin-inducing phone call she'd received from the doctor's office just before lunch

Her thumb hovered above the green call button (as if, somehow, it was sampling a case of calling them back and tell them no, they were wrong and she didn't accept their news and therefore it wasn't real or happening to her) but then she shoved the phone back into her pocket. What good would it do? What would ramming her two cents home to the doctor actually do to change anything, except perhaps make her feel one hell of a lot better?

It wasn't the fault of the doctors she'd been to see. She couldn't blame them or get angry with them, no matter how easy it would be, because the only person to really be mad at here was herself.

Gods, she felt so low right now. It wasn't a feeling she was accustomed to struggling with because it wasn't in her nature. She ploughed instinctively right on through any issues any issues with the potential to make her feel blue, and that was that. She didn't have time for them, just like she hadn't had time to miss her dad for a long time because she was trying not to get killed. Then, even though she had been safe, she had tried not to miss him by telling herself he was better off without her, that he had her stepmother and stepsiblings now. That was her way of dealing.

But this… How did you burst through this and come out of the other side?

There was no answer right there on the tip of her tongue, but she made up her mind to put one there, by force if she had to. Sure, she didn't know _yet_ , but she'd figure it out, she decided. Or, even better, _they'd_ figure it out, she and Percy, as a couple, because that's what they did.

She didn't know to break it to Percy yet, but she'd find a way because he deserved to know at the end of the day. It was his right as much as it was hers to know what was going on.

The snow didn't slow on the way back to their apartment. The sidewalks were total death traps, and she could barely see in front of her. Every time a bus or big truck fought past on the road beside her she flattened herself against the nearest building to avoid being sprayed by the slush and grossness building up near the curb.

When she finally got to her building, she took the stairs. Screw the elevator, she thought, as she burst into the service stairwell and clomped up the first flight. She needed to get warm and quickly — she had been shivering all of the way home — and there was no quicker way (or, perhaps, a better distraction) than hauling her ass up and up and up and up what she had never realised before today were apparently endless flights of stairs to their apartment.

She was breathing hard when she finally arrived at their door, which worked quite well because she needed so many of those exhalations on her hands to get them working again so they could manage the key to let her in.

The door squeaked — still, after all this time — as she slipped through, her ears trained on the apartment beyond. There was no indication from Percy's text whether he was at home or not when he had sent it. It would be just her luck if he wasn't, especially after she had resolved to be totally, bluntly straight with him.

He was home, however, and came peeking his head around the bedroom doorjamb when she closed the front door. He smiled at her and came to greet her, giving her a quick hello peck on the lips which terminated with an abrupt and horrified recoil on his part.

"You feel like _ice,_ " he said. "What have you been doing, playing abominable snowman?"

"Snow _woman_ ," Annabeth corrected automatically as she lowered her hood and yanked off her hat, sending her hair into peaks of static frizz. "And I resent the abominable. I've been for a walk."

Percy quirked an eyebrow at her. "In the snow. In January. In New York."

Annabeth sighed, offering a tired tilt of her head in agreement. She conceded now, as the warmth of the apartment got to work melting her frozen insides, that perhaps her choice of locations to brood earlier had not been the best one given the temperature.

Instead of saying anything, she clamped her teeth onto the middle finger of first one glove and then the other, ripping them off, balling them with her hat, and shoving them into one of her deeper coat pockets so they wouldn't have disappeared by the time she had to go out again. Things had a habit of disappearing in their apartment. Percy and Annabeth blamed each other, heatedly at times.

Percy grabbed her newly-naked hands and almost winced, moving to envelop them in his. "You feel like you've got hypothermia."

Annabeth quirked an eyebrow at him. "Uh-huh. Because hypothermia's always diagnosed by touch and touch alone."

Percy ignored her. "How long have you been out there?"

"Maybe too long," Annabeth admitted grudgingly. "I was thinking about stuff. Percy… there's something I have to tell you."

The direct approach. No pussyfooting around would do.

Percy gave an authoritative shake of his head. "Not before hot chocolate." He led her to the kitchen by her hands, which were still clasped in his, despite Annabeth's attempts to protest.

"Yes, _before_ hot chocolate," Annabeth said, trying to pull her hands from his. He wouldn't let her; instead he kept dragging her forwards and eventually steered her into a chair at the table in the kitchen. She huffed as she sat down against her will while he opened the fridge and pulled out milk.

"Seriously, Annabeth, Khione is warmer than you are right now and she's one frigid bitch. In more ways than one. You are gonna drink this, and you're going to like it."

Percy was already busy making hot chocolate and she bit her lip, watching him as he worked. As she contemplated bursting the happy little bubble he was bobbing around in right now, her heart sank all over again.

Instead of saying anything, she unbuttoned the toggles on her coat and then drew down the zip, shrugging out of it and throwing it over the back of her chair.

"Percy, sit down." If she watched him any longer in this state of blissful ignorance, she was never going to be able to say anything, was never going to be able to work up the courage to ruin everything. As much as she wanted to, she couldn't put this off indefinitely.

"Not before hot chocolate," he repeated, his tone almost singsong. "There is nothing what can't wait until after hot chocolate."

"This can't."

"Yes it can," Percy said with easy confidence. "Seriously, you can't say anything if you turn into an ice cube on me. Or an ice statue. And I have nowhere to keep you if you become an ice statue. Come spring you'd be all drippy, and by summer you'd be a puddle."

Annabeth bit her tongue, trying to hold back a weird combination of frustrated growl and desperate whimper. She managed to stay quiet until Percy deposited two blue mugs filled with hot chocolate down in front of her. There were blue marshmallows floating on top. Improbably, Percy was fantastic at making hot chocolate. She had never, ever had better hot chocolate than Percy's, not even one she'd paid about five bucks for in Starbucks, even though she was married to a demigod who had thought you actually toasted French toast.

Hello, shopping for a brand new toaster…

Annabeth looked down into her mug and sighed to herself, wrapping her hands around it, despite the painful prickles the warm ceramic attacked her fingers with, stabbing them back to life.

"I told you it could wait until after hot chocolate," Percy said, grinning and unable to keep a hint of smugness from his voice. Despite the scalding temperature of her mug, Percy's was already half gone. He had a chocolate moustache and was dabbing whipped cream from his nose with his sleeve. Table manners, after all, were part of the curriculum at a finishing school, not Camp Half-Blood.

"There wasn't much of a choice in the matter, was there?" Annabeth couldn't look at him as she abandoned her hold on the hot chocolate. Her eyes roved over the tablecloth, the faint splotch of coffee she hadn't been able to get out, the hole where she'd proudly accomplished a small piece of sewing and found out she'd stitched it to the tablecloth.

Martha Stewart, eat your heart out.

Everything in this apartment told the story of the life she and Percy had spent together, even the tiniest of things like the tablecloth, haunted by memories of cups of coffee past, all the way up to the frames with photographs and smiles and happy faces bursting out of them. Each one radiated happiness out at them from moments and adventures long over, like a time machine but not quite as good.

Perfect. It came back to her again. Her life right now was perfect; like a pair of magpies, Percy and she had lined their nest with all of the things that mattered in their life, material and otherwise, and so far it had all been so fantastic.

She couldn't help but feel she was about to tear apart everything they had built.

"The doctor called today," she said at last, sneaking a peek up at him through her eyelashes.

Percy only nodded, smiling at her as he waited for her to continue. "Okay."

"They… they've looked at those test results," she elaborated with difficulty now she actually had to face him and say it out loud. It was fine to resolve to do something, but to actually have to do it…

She saw the smile sink slightly off Percy's face; his hands twitched like he was going to reach out for hers but thought better of it. His second thoughts on offering her human contact stung. Did he already understand what was going through her head right now and feel disappointed in some way?

"You're okay, though. Right?" he asked, his forehead creasing into a frown.

Annabeth could barely give him an answer. "I'm okay, yeah."

Percy relaxed. She could see now the twitch of his hands had not been an aborted attempt to give her comfort but an actual flinch at the thought there might be something wrong with her. "Good," he said, blowing out a relieved breath. The smile returned to his eyes. "Then why the drama? The coming home as an icicle? If you're okay then nothing else matters."

Annabeth's sigh heaved her entire torso as she looked down, massaging her eyes. Her fingers had robbed her mug of a lot of its heat, but her eyelids were still freezing. It was a weird sensation. "I am okay. It's not me. He said… he said there might be a few, uh, _complications_." Her speech was broken and fragmented, almost as if her tongue didn't want her to form the words. "In fact, it's not good news. At all." The last part was blurted out in a rush and she didn't know where it came from. Its sudden appearance had frightened her, not just because of the speed it had tumbled out of her mouth with but also because she had suddenly given voice to the news which had previously only existed in her head.

Percy did grab her hands this time, and she was grateful. She squeezed back as her throat bobbed at the tears trying to work their way past where her tonsils should have been had she not had them out when she was six.

"You can tell me," Percy said, looking straight into her eyes. "There is nothing you can't tell me. Nothing. I love you. Now, what did he say?"

"Oh gods," Annabeth moaned. For all the comfort the contact of Percy's hands were giving her, she was torn between wanting to keep them there or using them to cover her face and play the ultimate game of peek-a-boo, the one where she hid behind her hands and basked in the comforting glow of denial because her problems were all blotted from view. "I know how much you want kids. And I realised actually yeah, I do, too. So _much_."

Percy thought he saw where this was going. His lungs surprised him by making their protests known about the fact that he was holding his breath; he hadn't even realised he was.

"He said there was scarring," she eventually managed, clearer and steadier than she had sounded before. "Lots of scar tissue, in fact. In my womb. I think he called them uterine adhesions."

Using the medical term made it all seem a little bit better — for a brief moment, she could pretend this cold, medical jargon wasn't about her and her body and her _life_ , but stuck in the pages of some medical textbook on the shelf of a doctor's office and nothing to do with her entirely.

Annabeth bit her lip to trap in what would have been a very choked sob. She felt selfish, evil, for sitting here and quietly and systematically dismantling everything Percy wanted out of life.

"He asked me if I'd ever had any blows to the abdomen," she continued. "He said, if he hadn't seen my notes, he would have said I'd been rushed to the ER after a car wreck or something."

She laughed humourlessly, bitterly. Being a demigod, taking blows to every part of your body, including the abdomen, was pretty much par for the course, especially when you lived with a child of the Big Three and got your ass catapulted through drywall while your husband was hanging from one hand from the fire escape.

She looked over at the wall she had plunged through, at the slightly mismatched paint on the repair job, and remembered it all so vividly. There had been the rush of air as she soared through it, then a cloud of plaster dust and the noise of popping and crunching that she had been unable to determine whether it was her or the wall.

She had often wondered how far the prayers to Apollo, the nectar and the ambrosia, had actually gone towards fixing the wounds they'd all sustained over the years. Now, apparently, she had found out and was paying a huge price.

"So what does this mean?" Percy asked, pretty sure he knew already but asking anyway, just in case he was getting the wrong end of the stick. He didn't want to make her say it, not if she didn't want to, but he had to make sure he knew what she meant so he could help her deal.

Annabeth let out a shaky breath. "It means… it means it will be very, _very_ unlikely for me to conceive naturally. One of my fallopian tubes looks like it's been scarred closed. Even if by some miracle the ovary that's actually open for business manages to get a viable egg into my uterus, the scar tissue would make it hard for it to attach. Has made it hard to attach. He thinks I've probably lost a few fertilised eggs really early on because they couldn't attach. And even then, if it does manage to attach, it would probably be hard for it to cling on long enough for me to even notice, let alone to carry to term. It's why we haven't had any luck, even though we've been trying… I'm so sorry Percy. I wish there was something I could do to make this better."

Percy shook his head so hard that Annabeth blurred in front of him. "No. You don't need to," he said, his eyes glinting with dogged determination. "Firstly, this is not your fault. Secondly, 'very, very unlikely' is not impossible, okay? There's still a chance."

"Fine, not impossible," Annabeth admitted. "But improbable and implausible."

"Hey, don't be confusing me with your fancy words, Wise Girl," Percy said. He nudged her leg under the table, a grin trying to return to his face, even if it was a shadow of its usual self. "All I need to know is that it _could_ happen, okay? That's good enough for me."

"It's _not_ though, is it?" Annabeth demanded, annoyed because, for some strange reason, Percy wasn't blaming her as much as she was blaming herself. "You want kids, Percy. I want kids. What if we can't do that? What if _I_ can't give us that?"

"Hey, this isn't about you failing. This isn't your fault. Anyway, do you want me to tell you about some other supposedly impossible things?" Percy said. "How about me kicking Hyperion's ass? Us kicking Kronos' ass? Or how about the fact the Greek gods exist and are moored above the freaking Empire State Building in a citadel designed by _you_? We can get through this. We can keep trying until it happens."

"It might not, though." Annabeth was determined now to let Percy pin his hopes on some tiny, remote chance. It wouldn't be fair. "In fact, it probably won't."

"Nope. Not interested," Percy said with a light shrug. "Who cares about probablys or maybes or anything else? A slim chance is still a chance."

"You're not listening. What if we _can't_?" Annabeth persisted, frustration and heat rising through her voice. She had to know the answer and Percy wasn't giving it to her. His face crumbled when he heard bad news and it wasn't crumbling and she had to know _why_. Why was he so okay with this? What wasn't she seeing?

Again, Percy shrugged. "We cross that bridge when we come to it. Anyway, Piper used to do a whole load of babysitting for the Jolie-Pitt kids. Something tells me their mom might have the number for a decent adoption agency." His eyes twinkled as he said it.

Annabeth gave a loud snort of laughter; she began to smile, which initially felt like there were ten pound weights dragging her entire face downwards until her muscles loosened up. "Idiot. Thanks. I needed that."

"By 'that', I'm gonna assume you meant me. You've got me no matter what. I'm here for better, for worse, for blah blah blah, you may kiss the bride, remember?"

Annabeth smiled, mostly because her mind had wandered as well during their wedding ceremony. Both of them had barely managed to stay lucid enough to do the repetition thing thanks to the fact they were floating on love and their ADHD brains were elsewhere.

"So we're okay?" Annabeth asked.

Percy scoffed. "Please. We're better than okay: we're awesome."

"I love you," she said, leaning across the table and kissing him square on the lips.

He kissed her back for a few seconds before pulling away. "I love you too," he said with a grin. "No matter what. We are going to get through this, Annabeth." He paused. "In fact, I love you more than you love me."

Annabeth smiled but kept silent, chewing on the inside of her cheek. This was a favourite game Percy played to wind her up; if she disagreed and said that no, actually she loved him more than he loved her, then it was all out war until the other conceded. As much as she _did_ love him, of course, her brain was in a sort of fragile state right now. She didn't think she could handle coming up with the verbal ammo.

So she had told him and the world hadn't fallen apart. They were still standing, and she hadn't destroyed anything. Apparently, it hadn't been the bomb she thought it would be and that, she realised, was why she and Percy worked so damn well as a couple. There was nothing they couldn't do together, nothing they didn't want to deal with together.

No matter what happened, they would be rock solid.


	2. April I

**_April I_**

Annabeth still got a kick out of hitting Madison Avenue with Rachel. Granted, most of that kick was probably the buzz she got from the champagne that materialised on a tray at Rachel's elbow whenever she got her AmEx out, a tray which was followed shortly by a personal shopper, but still.

Annabeth would do just fine without the personal shopper, thank you very much, but the free champagne was just to die for.

"So what's Percy going to get you for your anniversary?" Rachel asked as they walked, arm-in-arm, towards the aforementioned Mecca for shopping socialites.

Annabeth shrugged. "I don't know. He's always really secretive about it."

Rachel telegraphed her disapproval with Annabeth's answer through a very-effective frown. "Ugh. Well, that's seriously boring. Where's the fun in that? Maybe you can guess. What's the traditional fifth anniversary gift?"

"How do you mean?" Annabeth wasn't really paying much attention; she was busy scouting out the crowd, wondering if everyone here knew that she didn't belong. Maybe there was some kind of sixth sense Madison Avenue boutique shoppers shared.

"You know, like paper is one year, silver is twenty-five years, and gold is fifty years blah blah blah."

The brusqueness of Rachel's tone was something Annabeth was totally used to by now and it didn't bother her. "No idea."

Rachel huffed a sigh at Annabeth's unhelpfulness. "I thought you knew everything? Fine, let me think… Well, for my parents' fifth anniversary, my father bought my mother our ski lodge in Geneva, so… oh! Wood. It must be wood."

Annabeth turned to Rachel with a slightly bemused look on his face. "First of all, _wow_ you are rich. And second of all, something tells me it's probably not a ski lodge." Her tone was bone dry; it couldn't have been choked down with ten gallons of water. "Besides, Percy hasn't stuck to those rules so far. I don't think we're going to figure it out like this."

Rachel nodded in agreement; her mouth twisted in thought. "Mmm. Good point. Oh well. He's nailed it for three years out of four so far. I mean, I don't know what he was thinking the year he bought you a universal remote, but still, three years out of four is pretty good for a guy. So okay, what are you getting him?"

Annabeth was completely honest in her answer. "You know, I haven't thought about it yet. Normally, it just comes to me. Things have got in the way this year, though. Work and… other things. I'll get there. I always do."

Rachel smiled and elbowed Annabeth in the ribs. She leaned in, providing an air of conspiracy to the conversation. "I hear you loud and clear. So… you're thinking of getting him a _big surprise,_ right?"

Annabeth wrinkled her nose, leaning back away from Rachel to get a better view of her friend's face in the hope that that would explain the sudden bizarre change in behaviour. It didn't. "What are you talking about, Dare?"

"Oh, nothing."

Rachel's face was the picture of innocence, although there was a slightly cross edge to her voice that Annabeth didn't understand; nor did she get why Rachel made a big show of ditching their interlinked arms and peeling off in what was clearly thinly-veiled annoyance. Annabeth blinked at the space Rachel had left behind and trudged after her, shoving her hands in her pockets in tired resignation as she made way through the crowd after Rachel's departing ponytail. Rachel had stopped to look in a shop window.

"So cute!" Rachel said, looking back at Annabeth as she picked her way through the crowd. "Don't you think they're cute?"

Rachel currently had her face pressed against the glass a window where tiny designer baby clothes were being modelled by tiny mannequins. Annabeth's eyes widened, suspicion giving way to genuine fear as her gaze slipped from Rachel's grin to the shop window and back again. Why had Rachel dragged her all the way over here to look at baby clothes? Perhaps all of the prophecies had finally sent her over the edge.

"Uh, I think dry clean only baby clothes are a little impractical?" Annabeth tried, scrunching her face. And that was true because, really, that was pretty much the worst idea in the history of forever.

Yet even over the fear that Rachel had pulled a May Castellan on her and gone rubber room nuts, Annabeth's stomach clenched as she looked at the mannequins, wadding up a tight ball of misery somewhere behind her breastbone. Her heart was taking serious liberties and bombarding her brain with images of a baby of her own making its way on its hands and knees across the living room carpet dressed in little clothes just like that. Her heart was paying no attention to her brain, which was trying to shout it down with a reminder of what the doctors had told her back in January.

"Well, of course," Rachel said. "But I mean, baby clothes! Babies! Cute! No?"

Given how much Annabeth wanted a baby to put in those baby clothes, she couldn't agree. Instead, she just about managed to give a weak shrug at Rachel's questions, which seemed to offend her for some reason. Annabeth blinked as Rachel turned her back on the window, her ponytail whipping behind her as she stomped off.

"Hey, Dare! Slow down, will you?" Annabeth surged forward to catch up. What was wrong with her today? What was up with these mood swings?

Rachel reluctantly came to a stop and let Annabeth catch up, although she wouldn't speak for a time. She seemed to be part annoyed and part deep in thought; Annabeth idly wondered if a steak had ever been so tenderised as Rachel's tongue must be right now, what with how hard she was chewing on it.

"So what about those _storks_ , huh?" Rachel asked suddenly, focussing her gaze on Annabeth with all the accuracy of a laser but with an undercurrent of mischief twinkling behind it. A half smile had formed on her lips; Annabeth thought it looked anticipatory.

"Uh… what?" Annabeth asked. "Is that, like, one of your attempts to convince me how into sports you are? Because you don't need to do that and I don't think the Storks are a real team in… any sport. Or at you talking about actual storks because, well… there aren't any? This is New York. Are you sure you're feeling okay?"

 _Are you sure you're not having some weird, Oracle-induced seizure?_ is what she actually wanted to ask, but she didn't think Rachel would appreciate it with the mood she was in.

Rachel's eyes darkened rapidly. Annabeth might even have seen green sparks flaring behind them briefly — the Oracle had been known to explode unpredictably out of Rachel whenever Rachel got angry or upset — but it could have just been the sun.

"There might be storks," Rachel said, with what could only be described as a glower on her face. "They're migratory after all. And, sometimes, they deliver… _things._ "

Annabeth was becoming more and more convinced that she needed to take Rachel to see Chiron. Perhaps she'd spent too long with the Oracle in her. How long was one person supposed to live with that, anyway?

"Have you been at your mom's painkillers again? Seriously, Rachel, you're freaking me out a little."

"First of all, that was only because I had cramps, and second of all, well, that's nice, isn't it?" Rachel snapped, flouncing away from Annabeth yet again. "I thought I was supposed to be your friend." She strode towards a shop and disappeared inside. "By the way, we're going in here," she yelled over her shoulder before repeating her earlier vanishing trick.

Knowing Rachel could be quite the prima donna at times, despite the fact that she would deny it to the death, Annabeth rolled her eyes and followed slowly, her hands still in her pockets. This was probably just Rachel being Rachel. Annabeth decided to see if she could wait until Rachel calmed down before deciding whether or not they needed to take her back to Camp.

As usual, as soon as Rachel appeared in the shop, up popped a woman with a tray with two flutes on it. Except, this time, instead of champagne they contained—

"Orange juice?" Annabeth asked incredulously, taking hers and holding it up to the light. There was no fizz at all, which meant that it wasn't even a mimosa. Half the reason she went shopping with Rachel was for the champagne, and now she had to put up with plain old OJ instead? She took a hopeful sip, but couldn't even taste the tiniest bite of alcohol. Her shoulders sagged towards the floor.

"Yes, OJ," Rachel said angrily, her nostrils flaring. "I texted ahead. I thought I'd save you the trouble of having to lie about why you don't want champagne."

"What? You _turned down_ champagne?" Annabeth hissed. "Have you lost your freaking mind? Believe me, I want all the champagne. I was good with champagne. I'm not a fan of shopping with you sober."

Somehow, a pair of shoes had been brought out to Rachel without her even asking to see them. Rachel set her orange juice down on the floor, sat down on a leather stool, and kicked off her own ratty Converse so she could slide her foot into the new pair of shoes. They were even the right size. Did the rich and their personal shoppers share the gift of telepathy or something? Just another question to add to the ever-growing list, although it would probably still fall somewhere underneath _have you gone batshit insane?_

Rachel cocked her head at Annabeth and narrowed her eyes. "You'd… you'd rather have champagne?" There was hesitation and suspicion in her voice; her eyebrows knitted together. She tried to stand but immediately wobbled dangerously and had to sit back down again. "Too high," she told the shopper, and the offending shoes were whisked out of sight.

"Than OJ?" Annabeth asked. "Is that a trick question?"

Rachel frowned still deeper, padding over to Annabeth in her bare feet and touching her arm, looking deeply at her face for a while. Realisation dawned on her features, and her mouth dropped open. "Oh, gods. _Gods_. Annabeth, you… you really don't know, do you?"

"Know _what_?" Annabeth demanded. "Rachel, you're being really weird. Even for you."

"Oh my gods," Rachel breathed, stepping back and putting her hand to her mouth. "I didn't think... I didn't think I'd tell _you_. This whole time I've been trying to get it out of you. I thought that you'd tell me. I've been waiting for you to tell me all day. I thought you'd have peed on the thing by now and—"

" _Excuse me?!"_ Annabeth choked out, her eyes darting wildly around the shop. She stepped closer to Rachel and grabbed her arm, hissing: "Peed on _what_ thing?"

"The pregnancy test," Rachel said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, as if Annabeth was one of those people Annabeth was always yelling at on TV quiz shows. "I thought you'd have taken one by now. Well, I didn't expect this…" She laughed, breaking free of Annabeth's grasp as her mouth curved upwards into a grin.

Annabeth closed her eyes, the memory of the doctor's office four months ago coming back to her. Since then, she'd tried not to think about the whole situation. Even though, logically, she knew she should be taking practical steps such as looking up adoption agencies, she was still very much feeling like she was in limbo with the whole thing. It was easier that way than to have to actually try and deal.

"I'm really not pregnant," she said. Her voice was low and hollow. "Woman with a scarred uterus over here, remember? I've got the ultrasounds to prove it, just in case you thought that couldn't get any more depressing. Just because we don't keep them stuck to the front of the fridge with novelty magnets doesn't mean they've gone away."

Rachel snorted, folding her arms across her chest and fixing Annabeth with her best _bitch, please_ look. "Uh, woman possessed by the Oracle over here, _remember_? And yeah, Annabeth, you really kind of are."

The explosion of feelings this set off in Annabeth's chest meant she didn't even hear the glass of orange juice shatter on the floor.


	3. April II

**_April II_**

Something was buzzing in Annabeth's ears, like she'd stuck her head into a hive full of lethargic bees. Her fingers spasmed around the place where her glass had been before she'd dropped it. Dimly, she was aware of orange juice seeping into her shoes.

Rachel was waving a hand in front of Annabeth's face. "Earth to Annabeth. Come in Annabeth."

Rachel jumped as Annabeth's hand shot out to latch onto her wrist. She pulled Rachel closer, peering deep into her eyes.

"Pregnant?" Annabeth asked, shellshock reverberating through her voice. She swallowed in an attempt to moisten her dry mouth. "Me. I'm… pregnant?"

Rachel's eyes widened with concern. She used Annabeth's death grip on her arm to lead Annabeth over to the stool she'd sat on earlier to try on shoes. Annabeth took shuffling steps; Rachel wasn't sure she would have made it solely under her own power, without Rachel moving her. When they got to the stool, Annabeth sank onto it, coming to rest with a sharp bump.

The shop assistant hovered in the background, and Rachel glanced up at her. "She's not feeling well," she explained. "Could you get her some water?" The shop assistant nodded and vanished.

The pressure Annabeth was exerting on Rachel's wrist started to hurt. Rachel tried to unpeel Annabeth's fingers, but Annabeth was seized into place like a vice. Instead, Rachel crouched down in front of her, shifting with difficulty around Annabeth's kung-fu grip.

"Talk to me. Are you okay? I didn't mean to drop the bombshell like that. I thought… you know. I never thought… you really didn't know?"

"No," Annabeth whispered. She shook her head back and forth; it looked like a robot struggling to learn how to adopt human mannerisms. " _How_?"

Rachel raised an eyebrow. "Uh, well, you're not exactly asking the expert over here, but if you really want an answer, I think I remember enough of health class that I can probably manage a diagram." Her mouth twisted in thought.

She could shade the _hell_ out of that, especially if she did it in charcoal.

Annabeth raised her head to fix Rachel with a look, not unlike the one she used to stop newbie campers in their tracks when they were getting fresh with her. "Oh please. I know _how._ It's just all the doctors said that I _couldn't_. That it wouldn't be possible." The colour drained out of her face. "Oh gods. Pregnant?"

"Okay, here we go," Rachel said, reaching up to drag Annabeth's head down between her knees. "Deep breaths. You look like you're about to pass out on me."

Annabeth stared at the floor. The wood was scarred and pitted from women walking across it in stilettos. A scrunched up wad of tissue paper that had obviously been inside a shoebox at some point flickered in a draught.

Rachel's nostrils flared; her mouth compressed into a thin line "You're not breathing," she pointed out, her chin jutting forwards. "Unless I can hear you breathing, you're not getting up."

Annabeth realised Rachel was right and took a huge, rattling breath in through her nose, letting it out slowly through her mouth. She actually did feel a little better as she worked her diaphragm again and again, letting her entire abdomen fill with air and deflate again. Annabeth spotted a pair of shoes arrive next to Rachel.

"Here's some water," Rachel said, waving a glass under her nose. "Little sips."

Annabeth nodded, sitting up. The buzzing in her ears had eased a little, but she still felt like she wasn't in her body, like she was floating miles up above it watching this happen to someone else. She took the water from Rachel and took a drink. It was cold; she felt it freeze the inside of her stomach.

"I'm pregnant?" Annabeth asked again, looking down at Rachel's arm. When she realised how hard she was holding it her hand sprang back from it as if Rachel's arm had become lava. Fingermarks glowed angrily on Rachel's skin. Annabeth winced looking at them and tucked her hands firmly under her armpits.

"Maybe a little," Rachel said, her face spreading into a slow smile.

Annabeth took another drink of water. "Huh." She paused. "Why the hell isn't this vodka? This is so ironic. The one time I actually feel like I need to be drinking vodka rocks…"

"Yeah… no more vodka. Sorry." Then Rachel frowned. "Wait, why am _I_ sorry? Now who the hell is going to be my drinking buddy? I'm not drinking alone. I'm already a spinster; drinking alone is a freaking tiny step and a handful of cats away from a very scary glimpse of my future."

Annabeth smiled. "Uh, as opposed to the non-terrifying glimpses of the future you're used to?"

"Touché," Rachel admitted with grudging acceptance. "Are you feeling better? That was almost sarcasm. I'm taking this as a good sign."

Annabeth nodded. "Yeah. I feel better now." She handed the glass to Rachel. "Sorry. I didn't mean to get all fainting couch on you there. It's just…" She broke off to shove hair back off her face, blinking dazedly into the distance. "Yeah. Not what I was expecting when I got out of bed this morning. Can we take a rain check on shopping? I need to do one thing first, then I kind of want to go home and wait for this to sink in."

"Sure. Lead the way."

They stood up to leave the shop. When they got to the door, Annabeth turned around. "I'm sorry about the mess," she said to the disgruntled shop assistant. "Great OJ though. Thanks." Then she left before someone could hand her a mop.

Out on the street, Annabeth took a couple of seconds to get her bearing. Rachel hovered uncertainly at her elbow, looking at Annabeth as if she was afraid Annabeth would turn to glass and shatter.

"Don't look at me like that. I know I was kind of shocked at first, but I'm all about adjusting. I am adjustment girl. I'm fine."

" _Kind_ of shocked?" Rachel demanded. "Says the girl who unleashed the OJ tsunami?"

Annabeth blew hair out of her face in response, looking up and down the street again before deciding on a direction and marching in it.

Rachel trailed several steps behind, although not for lack of trying. She tried to fall into pace beside Annabeth, but Annabeth was striding it out too fast for Rachel to pull up next to her. "Where are we going?"

Annabeth didn't answer, her jaw set in a determined line. Her eyes were like chips of flint. The expression on her face seemed to be actually parting the crowds; they took one look at the resolution on her face and dodged out of her way. Rachel was able to stay in Annabeth's wake without having to fight along the sidewalk, something she wasn't sure she ever remembered being able to do on Madison Avenue. It was a testament to the look on Annabeth's face that it was pulling that off.

Annabeth swung into a pharmacy without warning; Rachel actually felt herself skid with the abrupt change of direction. She squeezed in through the sliding glass doors right before they were closing after Annabeth (Indiana Jones, eat your heart out). They juddered back open, but it was too late because she had already made it through, trailing after Annabeth as Annabeth snagged a basket on her way in.

"I did not wear the right shoes for this," Rachel muttered to herself, more than a little embarrassed to find she was winded by the speed Annabeth had chosen to walk at. There was cardio and then there was charging around after determined demigods — they really didn't compare.

Time to step it up on the elliptical, Dare…

Rachel spotted a glimpse of Annabeth as she whisked down an aisle and made after her. When she got to the top of the aisle, Annabeth was standing in the middle. She was staring at the shelves with apprehension, looking like a lost and bemused tourist. It was a stark contrast to the purpose she'd exuding just moments ago on the street.

Rachel sidled up next to her and followed Annabeth's gaze. They were standing in front of shelves of pregnancy tests. The longer they stood there, the more confused Annabeth looked.

"Ha, they're right next to the condoms," Rachel noted, pointing it out. "Kind of like a warning: Use these or next you'll be using one of these."

She looked at Annabeth, but she wasn't sure Annabeth had heard her. She looked like she was heading back towards catatonia.

"There are so many tests," Annabeth said, the dazed edge coming back to her voice. "I didn't know there were so many types of pregnancy test. I've never even been late enough to look before."

Rachel frowned, her eyes roving over the shelves. Annabeth was right; there _were_ a lot of pregnancy tests. Who knew?

"Okay," Rachel said, trying to sound helpful and assertive, hoping it would be the life preserver Annabeth was looking like she desperately needed. "We're women. We have babies. Well, not me. Maybe one day. But not now. Not that that's the point. We can do this. How hard can it be to pick a pregnancy test? Surely this is the easy part?"

Rachel picked one up off the shelf and examined it. "This one tells you how many weeks you are," she continued. "Useful." She picked up another one. "This one says it's over 99% accurate… Good. We like accuracy. This one is digital. This one is wide width, ultra-easy… Easy for what? Like… oh. Oh. Ew, now I get it. It's a bigger target. Gross. Oooh, this box has three in one box. Maybe you should get these and I can take one, too. Just to check there's been no, you know, immaculate conception or anything because you hear stories of gods appearing to maidens locked in towers in showers of gold—"

Annabeth grabbed the box Rachel was currently examining and dumped it in the basket. It rattled and bounced on impact.

"Okay, I guess this is the test for you," Rachel said. "The value pack. Three in one. I like the fiscal prudence. Great. So let's—"

Annabeth placed her basket on the floor and grabbed a plastic rack on one of the shelves bristling with tests slotted into it. She emptied it upside down over her basket and replaced the empty plastic, then started plucking handfuls of tests off the shelves, dumping them all in her basket until it was overflowing. She reached for more, but Rachel reached out to stop her.

"Uh, fiscal prudence? Also, let's let some of the other women in the tri-state area find out whether they're pregnant or not, huh?" Rachel tried, talking like she was trying to defuse a bomb. She guided another plastic rack Annabeth had in her hand back onto the shelf like it was actually bricks of C-4.

Annabeth nodded. The buzzing was returning and an alarming numbness was spreading throughout her body. Rachel bent to pick up the basket, placing a gentle guiding arm on Annabeth's back to help her towards the cash registers. As she did so, she scowled down at the seething mass of pink and pastel boxes in the basket.

"I don't know why you need a pregnancy test anyway," she grumbled. "You've got me. You don't even need to pee on me." That snapped Annabeth out of her trance. She looked up sharply, sharing a look of disgust with Rachel. Rachel clapped a hand over her mouth. "Oh gods. I really said that, didn't I?" she asked. "I swear, one day I'm going to have one of those brain/mouth filters installed, and the world will be a way better place."

Annabeth took the basket from Rachel, patting her on the arm. "It's okay. I got what you meant. But no offence, Rachel, but I just… I need proof, okay? Proof I can _see_ and _touch_. The Oracle… she speaks in riddles. She's not always clear. It might not…" Annabeth swallowed. "I mean, the doctors said I couldn't, so…" Annabeth was getting irritated with her apparent inability to complete sentences, but they were coming out of her brain half-formed. It felt like most of her brain was still working overtime processing the news without leaving much capacity for expressing herself.

"What do they know?" Rachel said, rolling her eyes. "Come _on_. They look on some stupid screen and say you can't have kids. Well, hey, there's a freaking city you designed floating about the Empire State Building. You're the child of a goddess. I'm the host of an ancient and revered spirit of prophecy. We're all about the impossible."

Annabeth felt torn. It wasn't that she didn't want to believe Rachel. She wanted to be jumping for joy right now (would that be bad for a baby, if it were true?), but, and the but was huge, everything was telling her this couldn't be true. It couldn't be that what she'd wanted for so long and been told time and time again she'd never have could be coming true, because this wasn't a fairy tale. There was no happy ever after once you'd been thrown through drywall and your abdomen had become one tangled mass of scar tissue, one medical science said would never carry a child.

"It's not that I don't want to believe you," Annabeth said, shaking her head and starting for the cash register again. "Believe me, Rachel, I do, but, well, you get told one thing for so long you start to think it's true, you know? How do you know you didn't see a baby we'd adopted?"

Rachel snorted. "Unless you adopted the baby out of your vagina, then I'm pretty sure it's your biological child I saw," she said, folding her arms across her body and looking annoyed that Annabeth was still doubting her.

Annabeth stopped walking suddenly, blinking at Rachel. "You saw me giving birth?"

Rachel nodded. "Yeah. And I'm kind of pleased I had the vision because it gives me time to make you a trophy and pre-congratulate you for the seriously inventive cursing you're going to break out in. I mean, brava. There's cursing and then there's _art,_ girl. You're going to take it above and beyond."

Annabeth looked like she was going to ask a question. She licked her lips, opened her mouth, then closed it again, holding it shut with her teeth on her bottom lip. Eventually she shook her head hard; it rippled down through her body. Taking a deep breath as if she were rebuilding a much-needed head of steam, she headed back towards the cash registers with renewed purpose. When she got there, the smile of the woman manning the register slid off her face when Annabeth tipped her quarry out onto the counter.

"All… _all_ of these?" the woman asked, the smile now watery and nervous.

"She wants to be _really_ sure," Rachel explained breezily, hoping to dazzle the woman with an obliging smile.

"Well, she'll definitely be… sure?" the woman replied, her eyes shifting between Rachel and Annabeth with a thousand questions running behind them. When neither of them said anything else, the woman picked up the first pregnancy test and scanned it. "Can I get you a bag?" she asked with a nervous swallow. "Or… two?"

"Percy?" Annabeth called as she entered their apartment. She hesitated on the threshold for a while, her ears trained on the apartment beyond. She knew Percy was meant to be at Camp and wouldn't be back for hours, but she wanted to check first, anyway.

There was no answer from the apartment so she opened the door wider, beckoning Rachel to follow. Once Rachel was inside Annabeth took the bag of tests from Rachel and locked the door behind her, in case Percy did come home and surprised them.

"He's not here?" Rachel asked, glancing at the freshly-turned lock. "And… you're locking him out in the hall if he comes home? Don't you want him here for this? I've been waiting for you to IM him since the pharmacy."

Annabeth sighed. She closed her eyes, using her free hand to shove hair slowly back from her forehead and let her fingers work into her scalp. "I can't do this to him," she said, her voice quieter than the gulp she took after speaking.

Rachel blinked, her lips framing a question which didn't get asked for a little while. She was back to treading on (Fabergé) eggshells, like she was working in a minefield, except one where the landmines had all been replaced with nukes. "Do _what_?" she said in the end, her forehead furrowing. "Give him the best news of his life? I thought you guys wanted kids? Annabeth, you've been trying forever. He is going to be thrilled. What's wrong?"

Annabeth shook her head. "Nothing's wrong. Nothing. I just…" She let out a sigh of frustration and moved towards the kitchen, sitting down at the table. The bag, forgotten, sagged to the floor next to her chair. She stared down at the same tablecloth she'd stared at months ago, when she'd first heard the news from the doctor. It blurred in front of her, fracturing into a kaleidoscope of colours through brimming tears.

Rachel frowned and followed Annabeth. She leant against the counter and folded her arms, eyeing Annabeth with concern. She'd heard the thickening in Annabeth's voice, the telltale sign of approaching tears, and it made her heart wrench, but she didn't get _why._ Why wouldn't Annabeth tell Percy?

She had no idea what to do, so she turned and grabbed the kettle off the stove. She filled it with water from the sink and putting it back down on the burner, lighting the gas. It was a comfort to do _something_ , because she was feeling useless right now and she hated it. Tea might help. Not as effective as the glasses of scotch she would usually deploy for such situations, but way more pregnancy-appropriate.

Annabeth looked up at the sound of the igniting gas. She blinked back her tears to stare at the blue flame licking at the bottom of the kettle. She got lost in it for a second; it startled her when Rachel pulled out the chair opposite her and sat down, blocking her view.

"We pretty much only drink tea when we're sick," Annabeth said absently.

Rachel shrugged. "Well, maybe it will help you pee."

Annabeth snorted, the corners of her mouth quirking up into the vaguest semblance of a smile despite herself. "Gods. This is the weirdest freaking day. We're having conversations, and they all keep coming back to me peeing."

"Meh. Sounds like every time we've ever been to a club ever," Rachel said. "'Tequila: You only rent it.' They should put it on the damn bottles."

Again Annabeth snorted; the smile was wider this time. She sighed again and reached over the side of her chair to haul the bag of pregnancy tests onto the table. She looked at them like they were about to sprout fangs and leap out of the bag to latch on to her face.

"Tell me why you don't want to call Percy," Rachel said gently. "Also, tell me if it's none of my business and I'll shut up but this, well, it's big. Don't you want him here for this? I know I've been working on my impressions and everything, but I'm a pretty crappy substitute for your husband on this one."

Annabeth put her face in her hands. When she emerged, there was a slight tremble to her lip, but her voice held steady. "I know it must look weird, but I can't tell him yet. I need to know for sure. I can't tell him he's going to be a dad because what if the Oracle's having a bad day, you know? I can't crush him like that. I've already… when the doctors told me I was pretty much _broken_ inside, it felt like I was taking away everything from him. From us. I can't tell him he's going to be a father then take it away again if I'm wrong. I won't do it to him. He doesn't deserve it."

"This isn't your _fault_ , Annabeth," Rachel said, practically lunging across the table to squeeze Annabeth's hands. Her eyes flashed and her jaw set hard. "Gods, you've done nothing but the right thing for years. You ended up falling into Tartarus to save Olympus. The things you've sacrificed, everything you've done… You and Percy and everyone else have saved the damn world over and over and over again, and it's some kind of sick cosmic joke that this is the thanks you get, but it's not your _fault._ " The words tumbled out in a savage rush and she gave Annabeth's hands a final shake to punctuate them.

Annabeth sniffed. "You want to tell my uterus?"

Rachel set her jaw. "Let me at it. Well, in a few months. I'm not about to give it a hard time until it's done baking the bun you've got in it. And anyway, you don't need to feel like this anymore. You guys did it. Baby on the way and everything. Now, are you going to take these tests or what? I want to start celebrating, and you're cramping my style, Chase."

Annabeth looked back at the bag again, trying to work up the courage to even touch it. "You didn't have to pay for these," she told Rachel, grabbing the Minotaur by the horns and tipping pregnancy tests out onto the table.

Rachel waved a hand. "It's nothing. I know you guys don't like feeling like you're one of my charity cases, but the bill was mounting up and your credit card has a limit. Mine doesn't. Plus, I kind of want to see what happens when my mother sees the charge for eight thousand pregnancy tests. I hope I'm there to see her head explode." She paused, wrinkling her nose. "Well… not for the clean-up. I imagine grey matter's one of those things which doesn't wash out, no matter how many stain removers you buy from infomercials. Speaking of, you're going to get a steam mop. They had this amazing deal on one of the home shopping channels."

Annabeth pinched the bridge of her nose, a pained expression crossing her face. She looked down at the table, heaving a sigh as her current situation was shoved unceremoniously aside. "Rachel, you already bought us a steam mop. Hell, you bought _Nico_ a steam mop and I don't think he even knows how to use a regular mop."

"Yeah, but that was then. They said this was one new and improved!"

Annabeth looked up at Rachel. It was as she feared; the maniacal look in her eyes was less a glint and more a fifty foot high beacon. "First of all, stop watching infomercials while drinking. Secondly, one day, we are going to have to have a serious talk about your home shopping habit." She fixed Rachel with both a glare and a disapproving finger, for all the good it would do.

"Please. I don't have a problem." Rachel blew air out through her lips in disbelief that Annabeth would even suggest it.

Annabeth's face remained stony and impassive. "Uh-huh."

"Hey, this one might be the thing to get out grey matter." Rachel was aiming for deflection, but the initial brightness in her voice was quick to wither. She folded her arms over her chest and shrank into herself a little under the onslaught of Annabeth's disapproval.

Annabeth sighed, shaking her head and dropping her gaze. "Cerebrospinal fluid as well as pee," she muttered, wiping a tired hand down her face. "This is the weirdest freaking day. Any other bodily fluids we want to throw in here, or are we done with this whole topic?"

Rachel looked incredulous. "Awesome steam mops aside — and _you're welcome_ , by the way — are you seriously telling me you don't want to see my mother lose her shit over this? Because if so, I am starting to doubt you're sound of mind."

Annabeth smiled. "Fine. Yeah, I'm not saying it wouldn't be fun. I mean, it would make a supernova look like a firefly, and you'd have to stand well clear, but I'd still want to watch it from a safe distance."

"I'll book the seats," Rachel promised. "Far rear and centre."

Rachel looked down at the kitchen table and began idly sorting through the pregnancy tests, flipping them up so they were facing the right way. Eventually, she realised what she was doing and trapped her hands under her thighs to avoid them twitching. Annabeth was nervous; it was rubbing off on her. She felt like she'd downed a red eye with a Red Bull chaser.

The kettle started to whistle; neither one of them moved.

Annabeth looked at the table as well, putting her thumbnail in her mouth and starting to chew. The sheer number of tests on the table was daunting; they all blurred into one mass. She regretted the impulsive decision to buy so many now, but at the time all she had wanted was to be sure. Now, looking at them all, she realised each one of them represented the possibility Rachel was wrong and the doctors were right. All she could see was a sea of negative tests looming in her future. A tidal wave of bad news and failure in sickeningly cheerful pastels.

The thought terrified her. She felt like she'd been lifted so high, and if Rachel _had_ been wrong then she wasn't sure she was going to survive the fall intact.

"So…" Annabeth said. She let a long breath out through her mouth. "I guess it's a good job my test scores have always been so high, huh?" she tried, letting out a nervous laugh despite the total lack of funny in what she'd said and hoping that countered the fact that it had fallen flat on its face.

She got up to turn off the gas, fanning away the billowing clouds of steam as she did so and wrinkling her nose.

Rachel smiled, turning around on the chair to face her. "You're going to be fine."

Annabeth also turned around. "Am I?" There was a scared and pleading edge to her voice.

"Annabeth, you are going to be more than fine. You have the Oracle's word. And even if you don't believe me then, well… pick a test. If you don't make the first step, you're never going to find out for yourself. You've got me all afternoon."

Annabeth nodded and moved back over to the table. Her face changed; Rachel could see cogs turning as she considered her options, driving the mechanical looping of hair behind her ear as she deliberated. "Do you think I should take them alphabetically?" Annabeth asked, her fingers hovering over all of the boxes. "Or maybe, like… the digital ones first, and then the non-digital ones? Or, maybe—"

Rachel threw her head back in frustration and snatched up five tests at random, thrusting them into surprised arms. "Less talk, more peeing," she commanded, putting on a stern face and pointing. "Bathroom, now."

* * *

"I can't believe you're dictating my bathroom habits," Annabeth grumbled through the closed bathroom door.

Rachel, who sat on the floor outside the bathroom leaning against the wall, rolled her eyes. "Come on. You were considering taking pregnancy tests _alphabetically_. Someone had to do something."

Above her, Rachel heard the door unlock. She climbed to her feet.

"I'm not going to say it's safe to come in," Annabeth said. "But…"

Rachel opened the door. Annabeth was sat on the edge of the bathtub chewing on her fingernail. Lined up on the counter around the sink were the five pregnancy tests. The kitchen timer, shaped like a conch shell with a twistable spire, ticked down next to them.

"All five," Rachel said. "Impressive. And you didn't even drink your OJ in the store this morning."

Annabeth pulled a face. "I'm kind of hoping I never have to contort myself like that again. But yeah. All five." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I guess now we… wait." The last word was delayed as she used her teeth to tear off the top of her nail. It started to bleed instantly, filling her mouth with the all-too-familiar coppery tang of blood.

Rachel sat down on the edge of the bath as well, bumping her leg into Annabeth's. "Hey, raggedy nail girl. Quit freaking out. You're going to give birth to the world's most neurotic baby if you keep this up."

Annabeth looked up and twisted her mouth in thought, searching Rachel's face. "Okay," she said eventually. "If we're actually doing this then I've got to ask. If you saw me giving birth — and that was totally a moment I wanted to share with everyone so _thanks_ to the Oracle for that — then did you see, you know… The baby, afterwards, was it…?"

Rachel smiled and mimed zipping her mouth closed. "A girl or a boy? Yeah, I'm not about to ruin it for you. I'll let you and Percy decide if you want to know. But I'm pretty sure there were ten fingers, ten toes. That's all I'm saying."

Annabeth's nostrils flared. "Screw Percy. When he's squeezing out a kid, he can make the decisions." She poked Rachel hard in the shoulder. "Spill, Dare."

"Ah," Rachel said, an atmosphere heavy with smugness settling on her words. "So you accept you're going to be squeezing out a kid now?"

Annabeth glanced at the timer ticking down next to the sink. She opened her mouth to reply, but no sound came out. When Rachel put it like that… maybe she was coming around to the idea. But one thing at a time. No cart before the horse. She wasn't going to get her hopes up, not until—

The timer trilled.

Annabeth felt the blood leave her face and pool somewhere in her feet. She looked up, staring over at the sink. It suddenly seemed a million miles away across the most hostile terrain.

"I don't think I can get up." Annabeth's voice was little more than a croak.

"I got this." Rachel lurched up from the edge of the bath. She crossed to the sink and considered her options. "How do you feel about door number three?" she asked, checking with Annabeth over her shoulder.

Annabeth again found her voice failed her; it died to a vague croak in her throat so all she could do was shrug.

Rachel took it as a positive sign and picked up the third test with one hand and the corresponding box in the other. She squinted at it and scrunched her nose, making a quarter turn to hold it in the light in the window. She flipped the test around, then the box, then the test again.

"Okay, seriously, what the hell is this? Runes? Sorcery?" she demanded, brandishing both the box and the test at Annabeth. "I know I'm the Oracle, but even I was not expecting to have to read the answer in freaking tea leaves. What does this even _mean_?"

Annabeth snorted. "Oh, come on," she said, galvanised by Rachel's overdramatic frustrations to the point where she actually regained feeling in her legs and was able to get up. "You're probably looking at it wrong. It's not divination. Give it here."

"No, it's not," Rachel muttered. "Because like I said, if this was divination I'd be all over it."

Annabeth crossed the bathroom and took the test from Rachel, grabbing Rachel's wrist with one hand to raise the box to eye level. Her eyebrows knitted together under her crinkled forehead. Her lips traced the instructions on the back of the box while she turned Rachel around in a circle as she fought to first get the box and then the test into a better light.

"I'm still attached to the box," Rachel groused, continuing to be paraded around the bathroom as Annabeth sought a better vantage point to examine the test.

"People pay money for this crap?" Annabeth bit out eventually, scowling at the test. "What is this? One line or two? What does one line and a kind of maybe faded one that's sort of there and sort of not mean?" She stalked across the room and grabbed the trash can, dumping the test in it with loud thump. She spun and held it out for Rachel to dispose of the box. Once Rachel got rid of the offending item, the trash can returned to its corner by the toilet with a clatter. "I'd get more freaking answers out of a Magic 8 Ball," Annabeth seethed to herself. "Think you might be pregnant? Well, go to all the trouble of peeing on me and then you'll still get _Reply hazy, try again._ " She let out an angry breath.

"Better?" Rachel tried gingerly, knowing full well with the roiling storm clouds brewing in Annabeth's eyes what the answer would be.

Annabeth's nostrils flared. "I'm going to write them a damn letter. You can't screw around with a maybe pregnant woman this way. What the hell was that meant to be?"

"Relax, we've got a few thousand more goes at this," Rachel said. "Pick another door."

Annabeth blinked, the anger in her eyes immediately dissipating as she slowly turned and looked at the sink.

"You want me to do it again?" Rachel asked. "Although apparently I kind of suck at it, so you might actually want to—"

"What does this say?" Annabeth broke in with quietly, her voice barely above a whisper. While Rachel was talking, she'd picked up another test and was holding it backwards and out towards Rachel. Her whole arm was trembling.

"Is this another two lines deal? Because I am not getting sucked back into trying to decode one of those things. It was like the freaking Rosetta Stone or something, I mean—"

Rachel heard Annabeth swallow and stopped talking abruptly. Annabeth still had her back to Rachel, but Rachel could see Annabeth's free hand clutching the edge of the sink so hard her knuckles were glowing white.

"It's digital," Annabeth breathed.

Rachel reached out and took the test from Annabeth.

 _Pregnant,_ it said. _2-3 weeks._

Rachel wasn't aware it was possible to damage her vocal cords more than the time she'd been to see a Swedish death metal band live, but apparently it was.

She was going to be hoarse for days.


	4. April III

**_April III_**

"I think I'm going to be sick," Annabeth said. She was sitting on her couch with an untouched mug of tea Rachel had made her steaming itself into Arctic oblivion on the coffee table in front of her. Annabeth was gazing a hundred yards through the unfurling steam.

Rachel gave a dismissive flap of her hand. "Oh, quit bitching. Will you _please_ quit saying you're about to puke? You've said it a thousand times and yet here you are, vomit-free. You're going to be fine. It's been a shocking couple of hours, that's all."

"Right."

Annabeth didn't sound convinced in the slightest, not by a longshot. Rachel wasn't even sure Annabeth was listening, so she took out her frustration on a fan of architectural magazines. She bent down and slapped them all together into a pile, banging them down on the coffee table to straighten the stack. The spoon in Annabeth's tea jumped, tinkling against the mug.

It got no reaction from Annabeth at all, so Rachel did it again. The whole mug jumped this time. Tea slopped over the sides. Still nothing. And that was something because Annabeth was crazy anal about using coasters on the coffee table to protect it from ring marks, and Rachel knew she'd made one no amount of Pledge was going to shift. She gave Annabeth an incredulous look then shook her head, throwing up her hands and walking away.

Annabeth seemed to have gone onto robotic autopilot since the positive pregnancy test, but Rachel was full of nervous energy. It was in such stark contrast to Annabeth and Rachel had no idea what she was supposed to do now. She wished Annabeth would say or do _something_ instead of sitting there mired in the depths of shellshock.

It was so not Annabeth that Rachel was actually starting to feel concerned.

Rachel spun on her heel and began taking out her inner drill sergeant on some coasters, swiping them around an end table so they were all lined up with the edge of the table. What was she meant to do while waiting for Annabeth to re-join the real world? She hoped Annabeth regained her senses soon. There were only so many freaking magazines and cushions and coasters an Oracle could straighten before losing her mind.

With her fingers itching for something else to straighten, Rachel cleared her throat. The sound made Annabeth look up, but her gaze was hazy and not particularly inquisitive.

"Annabeth… you are going to tell Percy, right? Soon? This is kind of a big deal." Rachel knew she should have to suggest this, but Annabeth could be knocked over with a feather right about now. She wasn't sure if Annabeth's brain was thinking about anything much beyond reminding her to breathe.

Annabeth blinked. The haze disappeared from her eyes; Rachel was glad to see some of the usual life behind them.

"Right. Gods. Yes." Annabeth ran a hand backwards through her hair and then checked her watch, balking when she saw the time. "Shit, he was supposed to be home twenty minutes ago." Her stomach lurched and for a few moments she couldn't catch her breath. "What if he's been attacked? What if there are monsters or another war? Am I going to be a single mother? I don't think I can be a single mother. I mean, how… what if this kid comes out and starts creating tsunamis? I can't deal with tsunamis; that's Percy's department. Oh, gods, what if—"

Rachel slashed at the air with her hand, stopping Annabeth in her tracks. Her eyes were wide and concerned. "Whoa, whoa. Slow down. What if you give yourself a freaking heart attack? Seriously, chill. You're freaking _me_ out here. What is your problem? This isn't like you at all. Do we have to go back to putting your head between your knees?"

Annabeth let out a deep exhale; some of the tension did melt from her shoulders but her lips pressed into a grim line anyway. "That me didn't have a baby on board. That me could fight monsters and kick ass and, and… eat _soft cheese_ , for crying out loud. Now it's like… baby time. What if I'm a bad mother? I might suck at this. What if—"

"What if I smacked you over the head with something heavy and put you into a coma until you calmed the hell down?" This time, Rachel's interjection was accompanied by folding her arms and a defiant _do not fuck with me_ angle to her chin. "I'm pretty sure the baby would be fine if that happened so I'm willing to risk it."

"Yeah, that _would_ be a risk," Annabeth immediately shot back, raising her own eyes to meet Rachel. Her nostrils were flared. "And not for the reasons you think."

Rachel smiled. "Ah, better. There's the Annabeth we know and love… to fear. Much better. Hold onto this, please. If this is a taster of you for the next nine months then I'm going to ask you to call when the baby's born. I'm not sure I can cope with the wet weekend version of you. Annabeth, you're going to be an awesome mom. Shut up and trust me. Not to brag, but my record of being right today is way higher than yours."

"That would be bragging."

Rachel considered this, tilting her head. "Yeah, fine. I guess it would. Well, fine. If I'm going to brag, I might as well go the whole nine yards. Suck on it, Chase, and listen to me: I am wise."

"The Oracle can't possibly know whether or not I'm going to be a good mom," Annabeth said. She flopped back into the sofa and used the first two fingers of each hand to massage her eyes.

Rachel's eyebrow quirked up. "Well, yeah. You might be right about that, but it wasn't the Oracle talking. It was me, your best friend. You should listen to me just as much as her. Maybe more, actually, as the Oracle doesn't get you Christmas gifts. She's not even a Christian."

Annabeth snorted. She managed a smile as her hands fell leadenly back into her lap. "Thanks."

"It's what I do. Now…" Rachel tucked her hands into her hips, rounding her attention onto plumping the hell out of Percy's battered easy chair. Her eyebrows were fierce with determination.

Annabeth wished Rachel wouldn't waste the effort. The damn thing couldn't be plumped. It simply was what it was. Percy had found it on the street when he and Annabeth had been furnishing their first apartment together and it had survived countless monster attacks, despite Annabeth's best-laid plans to see it annihilated.

Monsters. They burned holes in rugs, shattered windows, smashed holes in walls; hell, one time one had even melted a fridge, but the easy chair survived every time. Clearly, it needed to be elevated to Olympus because the damn thing was apparently immortal.

"Still," Annabeth said over the sound of Rachel's rigorous pummelling. "Thanks."

"For what?" Rachel's question was vague and barely heard over a renewed, vicious round of plumping. Dust blossomed into the air in frantic puffs, swirling around Rachel's head.

"Where do you want me to start? For not smacking me earlier? For being here today? For what you just said? I don't know. I'm sorry I've spent half the day freaking out. I know it's not my style but I can't help it. This is… it's so huge it's like it's broken my brain, you know? And yet you're still here. So thanks."

"Where else am I going to be?" Rachel gave the chair an angry kick. The footrest sprang out like a mocking tongue. Rachel shot it a filthy look before turning her back on it. "You should really throw this out, you know. It's beyond saving."

Annabeth blinked, her eyebrows disappearing into her hairline. "Excuse me? You think I don't know that? You don't know me half as well as you think you do if you're seriously suggesting I haven't gone down that route already."

Rachel collapsed into the chair, exhausted and defeated. The aged leather creaked underneath her. "Percy?"

"Percy," Annabeth agreed. "He has an attachment to it bordering on the… I don't even know."

Rachel nodded, idling fingering the duct tape holding the stuffing in one of the arms. "Then you should probably get it incinerated by a monster. Percy can't keep it once it's a pile of ash."

Annabeth's eyebrows hitched still further northwards; Rachel was considering planting carrots in the furrows traversing her forehead. "Oh, yeah, why didn't I think of that?" Annabeth struck the heel of her hand against her forehead. "Stupid, stupid. Of _course_ I've tried incineration by monster but the damn thing is blessed by some obscure god of ugly home décor. We could be living in a china shop and the Minotaur could come rampaging through and that chair would be the one unbroken figurine, despite the fact it's so hideous no one's batty old great aunt would buy it, no matter how crazy she is and how many figurines she has. It's indestructible. Immortal. I'm thinking of suggesting a fourteenth throne on Olympus for it."

Rachel smiled, leaning back on the chair and steepling her fingers in her best Bond villain impression. "Excellent. The rage has returned. I've been expecting you. The lost sheep Annabeth scares the crap out of me, FYI."

Annabeth's mouth fell open. Rachel must have known the recliner was a sore spot and she'd used it to snap her out of her trance. What was more, Annabeth wasn't even aware Rachel had been using it against her.

Damn, Rachel was getting good. Annabeth did not normally let herself get played, although there had been times when she had known Nico was trying to get a rise out of her for fun and she had reacted despite herself.

Sometimes, violence was the answer. So sue her.

She was about to shoot back a reply when there was a knock at the door. The doorknob rattled.

"Annabeth?" It was Percy, locked out in the hall. "Annabeth, are you in there? My key won't work."

"Oh my god, I should hide," Rachel hissed, jumping up from the chair. Her eyes darted around the apartment. "Do you think he'll go in the bathroom? Maybe I could hide behind the shower curtain…"

" _Hide_?" Annabeth demanded. "Why would you _hide_? We're not having an affair. You could always do the sane, rational adult thing and… _not_."

Rachel nodded, the fear evaporating from her. "Right. Yeah. Sorry, it felt like this was a massive secret and I should go into covering it up mode. Maybe I'm watching too many soap operas."

"You think?"

Rachel narrowed her eyes. "Hey. If you're going to take away my infomercials then you leave me with my soaps. I'm pretty sure it's in the Geneva Convention or something and if not then I'm going to put it in there. Like I said, we've got a ski lodge there. I've got some skin in the game straight away. And you laugh but I know how to get shit done. Anyway, you probably want me to leave, right? So you guys can talk?"

Annabeth smiled gratefully. "Do you mind? It's just… yeah. Like you said, big news and not the kind you usually break with three or more people in the room. Well. Unless maybe there's a sister wife situation, in which case—"

Percy knocked again. "Annabeth?"

"Your brain never switches off, does it?" Rachel marvelled, her eyes bright with amusement as she crossed the apartment. She picked up her bag and moved to the front door. "And of course I don't mind. Don't be stupid."

"My brain has needed rebooting a whole lot of times today," Annabeth grumbled. "So yeah, I'm fairly sure it does switch off and it's had more downtime in the past couple of hours than it's had in years."

"Understandable, really," Rachel said, unlocking the door and swinging it open. "Hi Percy," she chirped. "Bye, Percy!"

Percy blinked, pausing with his hand raised for a third knock. He gave alarmed side eyes at Rachel's retreating form as he crossed the threshold of the apartment. When it became apparent Rachel wasn't returning, he closed the door behind him, shaking his head.

"What's up with her?" Percy asked, jerking his thumb behind him. "Was it something I said or is she having one of her weird, Oracle-induced seizures?"

Annabeth smiled at the familiarity of the sentiment. "No, she's fine. She wanted to give us some time."

"Yeah?" Percy asked. As soon as he walked from the door he began his habitual shedding. The trail started with his jacket, which he hung in a neat puddle on the floor. Then he disgorged keys and coins into a bowl on a table by the front door especially for the purpose — it had taken some time for both of them to get used to, but it solved endless arguments about where each others' keys were — and kicked off his shoes one by one.

He moved to the fridge and opened it. The cool air washed over him and he was grateful for it. Sparring with other veteran campers for the benefits of the newbs was always going to be hot work, especially when Clarisse was involved.

"Yeah. We need to talk."

Percy popped up over the door of the fridge with a carton of orange juice in his hand. "About what?" His face collapsed, paling several shades. "Wait… Our anniversary isn't today, is it? Because I totally wrote it on my hand but it sort of got washed off, but I swear it isn't today. Is it? Oh gods." There was both fear and regret in his voice now. "I'm so sorry. I screwed up. I really thought it was—"

"Relax. Even though you may have seaweed for brains at times, you didn't forget. It's not yet. It's not about our anniversary."

Percy's shoulders slumped with relief. He unscrewed the cap from the orange juice and took a swig, catching Annabeth's pointed glare around the edge of the carton. "What? I'm going to finish it."

"Damn right you are. There is no way I'm drinking that now."

Percy gave a slow smile and took another drink of orange juice before putting it down on the counter. He closed the fridge with his foot and moved over to Annabeth, leaning on the back of the couch with his forearms. "Please. If you were so worried about the germs in my mouth then you'd hate it when I—"

He bent further forwards and kissed Annabeth's neck. It came as a surprise to her and it took a while for her to yield to it; the tendons in her neck remained rigid for a little while before she allowed herself to dissolve into it. Her head rolled back, giving Percy more access to kiss along her collarbone.

Percy broke off and made his way around the couch, throwing himself down next to her and kissing her lips. Her mouth disintegrated into a receptive mush much faster than her neck did. She certainly did not hate it when Percy did this, not at all.

They broke the kiss, smiling at each other. Annabeth touched her fingers to her lips and felt them curve into a wider smile. They were tingling.

She slammed the brakes on her thought process so hard she was pretty sure she'd pitched herself through the windshield. Shaking away the googly-eyed feeling, she replaced it with a businesslike gleam. She could allow Percy to distract her all day — he was very, _very_ good at it — but she had to tell him now because otherwise she might burst.

"Serious face," Percy commented with a slight frown. "That doesn't normally result in serious face. Maybe I messed up. What if I…"

He cupped Annabeth's face, resting his pinky along her jawbone. Annabeth felt her breath hitch — because it still did, every time — and she leaned automatically towards him, but then pulled back at the last minute.

"No! No. Go and sit on the coffee table." She scooted backwards and straightened her shirt, running her hands down the front of it over and over until she felt the rumpling stop resisting. Then she reached up to smooth her hair. She could feel blood rushing to her face and, uh, _other places_ , and if she let Percy distract her then she wasn't going to get chance to tell him.

Plus, she was pretty sure Rachel had gone precisely nowhere and was listening in from the hall (because that was Rachel all over), and friends didn't scar friends by letting them hear each other having sex. Or letting friends know she and Percy had had sex on the couch (more than once) they then invited their friends to sit on.

She had to get Percy away from her before her inhibitions went out the window and she gave Rachel a reason to voluntarily perforate her own eardrums.

Percy blinked at her and the corners of his mouth turned down slightly. Annabeth was still directing him to the coffee table with piercing eyes and he slumped dejectedly before complying. He slid onto the coffee table like a scolded puppy, hurt written across his face.

He almost sat on Annabeth's abandoned tea. "Are you sick?" he immediately asked when he spotted it. He winced; he hadn't meant to sound so hopeful. It was just if Annabeth was sick then it made her rejection sting a little less.

"No, Rachel made it for me. I told her I didn't want it, but…"

"Oh." Again, the sound of dejection in Percy's voice, hope clearly extinguished.

"Oh, come on, Percy. Don't look at me like that. This isn't about you. I have something to tell you and if you keep that up…" She reached for one of Rachel's regimentally-aligned magazines — noting Rachel had messed up the order of them as she did so — and fanned herself with it. "Yeah, it's not going to happen any time soon."

"Okay."

Annabeth was reminded of the conversation they'd had back in January, with Percy and his stoic responses. It was what she loved him for, for not panicking before he needed to (and sometimes not even after he should be), but the reminder unsettled her. Even though what she was about to say would blow January out of the water, the memory of having to come clean back then still haunted her.

It felt like her jaw had suddenly been wired shut. She couldn't speak, which was ridiculous because she wanted to shout from the rooftop. Instead, she felt the burn of tears brimming in her eyes and throat, which was staging a mutiny by tightening around her vocal cords.

"Hey, hey. Why are you crying?" Percy said, alarmed. "Is everything okay? You're okay, right?"

Annabeth could only nod; it dislodged the tears wavering on the edge of her vision. They zipped freely down her cheeks.

"Happy tears," she managed to choke out at last, with an oh-so-attractive snuffle and a sob which refused to be swallowed all the way down.

"If you're happy, then you don't need to cry," Percy said, concern crinkling his forehead. He leaned forwards to brush a tear off her cheek with his thumb. He kept his hand there, stroking small circles on her cheekbone with his thumb. His fingers wound gently into her hair and he used it to bump their foreheads together. "Right?"

Annabeth smiled and made a noise even she couldn't identify as a sob or a laugh. She turned her head to kiss Percy's hand. "I love you."

Percy blurred in front of her through tears, but that didn't make it any less true.

"I love you, too."

"Good," Annabeth said. "Otherwise, it would suck that I'm going to have your baby, huh?"

Percy rocked back away from her. His jaw hit the floor.

Silence: one so all-encompassing a pin dropping would have sounded like a sonic boom.

* * *

Rachel was getting bored. And also cramp.

The human body was apparently not designed to be hunched over, listening at a keyhole for agonising minute after agonising minute. Go figure.

Not that she was being a bad friend by listening in, of course. She was pretty invested in the conversation going on in there. You couldn't blame her — after all, it would be happening at all if it weren't for her. And when it came to the conclusion, she wanted to jump right in there and help them celebrate.

Well, that was what she'd be telling herself so she could get to sleep tonight, and she was pretty sure she'd be successful. Plus, it wasn't like she could hear every word. Every other word, max. So how could it even be considered eavesdropping?

She had almost given up when she thought she heard kissing, though, because gross. No one wanted to listen to that. Plus, _gods_. There was already one kid percolating, wasn't that enough for them? However, the following silence had kept her listening.

Her heart hammered against her ribcage, demanding she take a breath, but she was determined not to until she heard _something_ coming out of the apartment. Eventually, with her pulse thrumming in her ears, she was forced to take a gasping breath, but still no sound came from the apartment. What was going on? Why had it gone so quiet?

She tried to imagine Percy laid out on the floor flat on his back, out cold from the news. It was amusing, sure, but it didn't really ring true. Then again, she never thought she'd have to coax Annabeth through a round of hyperventilation, either, so what did she know? It wasn't like Annabeth to embark on a major freak out, but then again it had been huge news. After wanting a baby so badly and for so long, it was no wonder the news had floored her.

Maybe by that logic, Percy felt the same and he was actually out cold on the floor. Maybe—

Percy's yell scared the crap out of her. She jumped. The back of her head collided with the doorknob. Pain flared through her skull, stars appeared, and then her ass connected without a shred of dignity with the floor. She only had the vaguest idea of how she had ended up down there, but the little birds flying around her head were all kinds of cute.

Well. She guessed that was karma reminding her not to eavesdrop, then.

Percy was still yelling. It was the strangest sound; it would have bordered on bloodcurdling if it wasn't so suffused with joy. She could hear Percy jumping up and down; the thumps of him landing shook the floor beneath her.

Despite the pain in her head and despite a nagging suspicion she might be having a full-blown cerebral haemorrhage, she smiled. The grin split her face, made her cheeks dimple and ache. She curled her fingers into the carpet and kicked her legs up and down, giddy with happiness.

They deserved this. They deserved this so much.

The door was wrenched open so fast Rachel felt the air pressure in the hall shift. Percy stood in the doorway; his hair was rumpled and sticking up in all directions. Despite this, he dragged another hand through it. His eyes were wide and delirious, unable to focus on any one thing for any length of time.

His face was a beacon of unbridled joy. It burned into the all in a way that was almost painful to look at, like looking into the sun.

He blinked down at Rachel, the light in his face dimming only marginally with confusion. "You're on the floor." He didn't ask why — Rachel wondered if it even occurred to him to ask why right now — only extended a hand to help her to her feet.

Rachel accepted but squealed as she was hauled to her feet. Percy had been overenthusiastic and she staggered into his arms. He grabbed the sides of her face and swooped in, planting a brief kiss full on her lips and ending with a loud flourish.

Rachel staggered back out of the kiss. Her fingers touched her lips; her eyes were wide with surprise. Percy didn't seem to register her shock — he was so ecstatic she wondered if he'd have kissed anyone he found in the hall, even a perfect stranger.

"W-well hello to you, too." Rachel knew she was stuttering. She could also feel her eyeballs bulging out of her head so hard she was surprised they weren't rolling around on the carpet.

Percy let out a gleeful cackle and dragged yet another hand through his hair. His grin was infectious and Rachel soon found an identical one on her face, overriding her shock.

"I'm gonna be a dad!" He physically picked Rachel up and hugged her close, spinning around in circles with her. The hallway dissolved into a monotonous blur as they span.

Rachel thumped Percy's back with her fist. Her ribs were creaking in protest but he was unrelenting. "I'm not instigating this!" Rachel yelled to Annabeth over Percy's shoulder. Hair was flying in her face. She spat some out of her mouth and shrieked. "Put me down!"

Annabeth was standing in the apartment with her arms folded an expression of wry amusement on her face. She was shaking her head, her lips twitching as her eyes followed their progress. Percy continued to spin Rachel around. Rachel closed her eyes and let out in another shriek, half in amusement and half in terror. It still didn't seem to register with Percy.

"Well, I can't spin Annabeth around, can I?" Percy said.

Annabeth blinked. Then her eyebrows pressed together and her lips thinned. She folded her arms tighter. "Hey, I'm pregnant, not porcelain."

It was lost in the roaring noise Percy was making and the almost continual shrieking from Rachel.

"Percy, if you don't put me down I am going to puke on you!" Rachel said, still swatting Percy on the back.

Reluctantly, Percy put Rachel down. She staggered and leant on the doorframe.

"Hey, if treating you like porcelain keeps the insane spinning and motion sickness at bay then you work that angle as hard as you can," Rachel told Annabeth. Her face looked like the green of her eyes had started to leak down her cheeks.

"Champagne!" Percy said suddenly, snapping his fingers in quick succession. He darted back into the apartment and began rifling through his abandoned jacket for his wallet, stopping to glance up at Annabeth. "Not for you, though. Sorry. Should you even be standing up right now? Is that a thing that's allowed?"

Annabeth arched an unimpressed eyebrow. "I think standing up is fine until the eighth week."

"See, I'm like eighty percent sure you're being sarcastic right now but I can't tell. Don't be sarcastic about this. Don't make jokes." Percy snapped his fingers yet again, gesturing at Annabeth as he did so. "Oh, we need to get you one of those scans where they see the baby. And… like maybe a bed in a hospital somewhere for you to lie down on for the next eight months?"

Annabeth blinked wordlessly at him, her mouth working up and down and her head shaking side to side.

Percy winced. "Okay. Sorry. Too much, huh?"

Annabeth snorted. "Percy, if overkill is here where I'm standing then you're on Pluto. I'm _fine_."

"Let's not tell Hades I'm hanging out on Pluto, okay? I think he's still sore about its demotion. Or at least his Roman aspect is. The last thing he needs is me jumping up and down on it because I am so not his favourite person. But whatever. That's not the point. If you're not going to let me get you a hospital bed, we at least need a baby doctor."

Annabeth smiled, walking forwards towards Percy and grabbing his hands. "Okay, please don't take this the wrong way but you need to dial it down. And I already have an OB/GYN."

"You do?"

Annabeth shot an exasperated gaze over Percy's shoulder at Rachel. "Men," she said to Rachel, jerking her head at Percy and then shaking it. She heaved a sigh and bent down to pick his wallet up off the floor, pressing it into his chest. "I love you, but I've got this. You just go and do the hunting and gathering thing with the champagne and we can talk when you get back."

Rachel pushed herself off the doorframe to weave her way back towards her bag, the hallway tilting and lurching as she did so. Apparently, she still wasn't over the spinning. "Waaaaaaaaaay ahead of you," she said, extracting a bottle of champagne from her bag. It was beaded with condensation and already had the foil peeled away from the cork.

Percy grinned, snatching the bottle from her. His fingers moved on the wire cage faster than even Leo would have been able to keep up with. He crossed the apartment to the window, wrenching up the sash.

"I'm gonna be a dad!" he yelled to the city. He unleashed the cork from the bottle with a screech and a pop. Champagne frothed from the mouth of the bottle; the cork shot away and out of sight. Percy slammed the window.

Annabeth eyed the vapour coiling from the bottle and narrowed her eyes at Rachel suspiciously. "That's cold. How have you kept it cold in your bag?"

"So it should be cold," Rachel said. "It's been in your fridge since this morning."

"When did you sneak _that_ into my fridge?" Annabeth demanded.

"When you went to get your purse, before we went shopping. I knew I was going to find out today. I just… didn't know _you_ were going to find out today as well. Oops. Yeah. Maybe the Oracle is a little ambiguous on finer details sometimes, but the big stuff, like babies? She's all _over_ that shit."

"Fine. When did you sneak it _out_ of my fridge?" Annabeth couldn't believe Rachel had been sneaking a bottle of champagne around her apartment without her noticing. She noticed when the damn magazines were in the wrong order on the coffee table for the gods' sake; how had she not seen this?

Rachel shrugged. "When you were peeing on your tests. The whole thing has felt very covert ops. It's been fun."

Percy blinked at Rachel. "Wait, you put that in there this morning? From what Annabeth just told me, wasn't this morning before _Annabeth_ even knew?"

Annabeth sighed. "It's a long story," she said, plopping back down onto the couch. "And it's been an even longer day."

Rachel rolled her eyes, breathed on her nails and polished them on her sweater. She examined her chipped and peeling purple home manicure like it was the Mona Lisa. "Percy, please. You should have figured it out by now. I'm good."

Percy's mouth fell open. "You knew…?"

"Before Annabeth? Sure. Long enough to know the giant box of tampons in the bathroom Annabeth bought because they were on promotion isn't going to be much use for the next few months." Rachel paused, craning her neck to make eye contact with Annabeth over the back of the couch. "Speaking of, as they're only going to be gathering dust…?"

Annabeth stared at Rachel for a minute or to, then shook her head. She rubbed her eyes and heaved a shrug Atlas would have been proud of. "Sure. Knock yourself out, I guess. First you force me to pee and now you're liberating me of tampons. I swear to the gods, this is the weirdest freaking day."

"Excellent!" Rachel said, clapping her hands. "Now, can we get to the drinking part? Not that it matters for you, Annabeth, and sorry about that, but the longer Percy stands there and doubts my awesome powers of foresight, the warmer the champagne gets. I had to swipe it out of the fridge before Percy got home and did his usual post-sparring fridge raid so it wouldn't give the game away. That means it's already warmer than an '88 Dom Pérignon ought to be and it's not getting any colder."

Percy looked from Annabeth to Rachel and back again. Rachel felt a bit sorry for him. She could practically see the cogs turning inside his head. She got it, though. It had been a long day of big revelations. Plus, the Oracle thing still sometimes knocked her friends for six, even after all this time.

"Uh, drinking. Sure," Percy said. At least he felt on solid ground with that. It was actually pretty much his first instinct right now. "I'll, uh, get some—"

Rachel delved into her bag and unwrapped two crystal champagne flutes from a silk scarf her mother would be horrified to know was being used to stop crystal chinking together. Hermès had only made the print once, apparently. As if that meant anything to her. She didn't even think the print had that much merit artistically, despite the price tag.

And as for the crystal? Well, there was no way she was going to drink champagne older than her out of mismatched IKEA stemware. Even she felt like clutching her pearls at that one.

"Yeah, here we go," Rachel said, thrusting the glasses at Percy. "What? Don't look at me like that. Just pour the freaking bubbles. I already told you: I'm damn good."


	5. April IV

**_April IV_**

* * *

Annabeth opened the door to her apartment with a basket of laundry balanced on her hip. It was still in darkness as she'd left it; her jaw clenched. She kicked the door closed behind her. It boomed as she sailed through the apartment, dumping the laundry on the kitchen table with another crash as she went.

As she made her way towards the window and the closed curtains, Percy sat bolt upright on the couch. He was still dressed in yesterday's clothes (minus a shoe). His hand swept across the coffee table next to him, knocking over a glass of water as he did so. He spat out a couple of dark curses before his fingers closed on Riptide. He hopped to his feet, thumbing off the cap so by the time Annabeth reached the curtains and wrenched them open, daylight glanced off the blade.

Squinting in the new light and using his free hand to block it from his face, he managed to focus on Annabeth. To him, she was haloed in the light from the window, but he could tell from her silhouette (not to mention the fact she was drumming her fingers on the bicep of her tightly-folded arms) she was not happy. Correction: Not Happy. Capital letters totally implied.

"Hey," Percy tried. His voice croaked; his tongue was shrivelled and stuck to the roof of his mouth. Why did he have to go and spill his water all over the rug? He worked his jaw a few times trying to loosen everything up, but really nothing would do except sticking his head under the faucet.

"Oh, no. Don't you hey me." Annabeth moved from the window back to the kitchen and plunged into the laundry basket with both hands. She began balling socks like she was clawing through an abdomen to yank out the entrails of her enemies. Elastic creaked in protest.

Percy closed his eyes. The darkness behind the lids sang to him like a choir of angels. As Riptide shrank back into pen form he rounded the couch and made his way towards Annabeth. He stumbled on his first steps, blinking down in confusion at one shoed foot and one clad in only a sock. "Did I… did I take my shoe off last night?"

"Somewhere, yes." Annabeth's tone was clipped, dangerous. "In this apartment? Not that I've found. But the location of your shoe is not even close to the top of the list of questions I have about what the hell went on last night."

Percy winced. He started back towards Annabeth again, limping on his mismatched feet. "Okay, I know. I'm sorry, I should have called. I was training with Will and Nico and then we decided we deserved a post-training drink, and also because Nico said he wanted to buy me a drink because of the baby, and—"

Annabeth's eyebrows vanished into her hairline at the mention of the word 'baby'. Her nostrils flared and she mashed two socks together into a ball so hard she came close to fusing cotton particles.

Percy sighed, closing his eyes again. He wished he could stay behind the lids forever. "Which I know I'm not the one carrying, but—"

Annabeth tossed down a sock she hadn't be able to find a partner for. "Percy, this isn't some bullshit about me being mad because I'm pregnant and you're only the father, so you get to go out and have fun and I don't. We're having this baby together. Just because I'm doing the heavy lifting doesn't change anything. I'm not mad because I'm petty and can't stand you having fun without me, I'm mad because last night I was sitting here on what's probably going to soon be an ever-expanding pregnant ass going out of my mind with worry. I had no idea what had happened to you. You could have been attacked. Anything could have happened."

Her voice started to crack, but she forced the bubble of emotions back down her throat. She hated it when people dismissed emotions in pregnant women as hormones, but she doubted that she would be running this particular emotional gamut without them. Regardless, they felt very real to her and she had to fight to keep them in check.

Guilt joined last night's beer roiling and squirming in Percy's stomach. "I should have called. I get it. I'm so sorry. I wasn't expecting one drink to turn into… yeah."

"You mean turn into you stumbling in at 3am, when I'd finally got my sick with worry self to sleep, and almost setting fire to some bacon?"

Percy glanced over Annabeth's shoulder, eyes widening with the memory. In a frying pan on top of the stove sat what looked like five tiny strips of jerky after a visit to a crematory. "In my defence, bacon sounds amazing when you're drunk."

The steel in Annabeth's eyes hacked its way through his paper-thin defence with gusto. "I called you a million times. In fact, I'm pretty sure I could be registered as a stalker for the number of times I called you. You didn't pick up."

Percy tried a different tack. "Sorry. They took me to a gay bar. Those places are _loud._ Also, there's nothing wrong with going to a gay bar, but I spent half the evening getting mauled. So it wasn't a totally awesome night from my end, if that's any consolation."

Annabeth snorted. "You want sympathy because some guys copped a feel? You're looking in the wrong damn place. Congratulations on recreating the club experience of every girl in America."

"Guys have grabbed your ass in clubs?" Percy fought the urge to thumb the cap back off Riptide again as he said it; his hand tightened on the pen.

Annabeth looked up from her laundry, blinking bemusedly. "Are you kidding? I have a pulse, Percy, so _yeah_. That's happened to me. What, did you think my judo move where I use someone's momentum against them to bend their wrist back and drop them to their knees was developed for monsters? They don't get away with it, _trust me._ So drop the chest-beating crap. I can take care of myself, even if a guy does see blonde hair and somehow equate it with even more fair game than usual."

Even though Percy's jaw was still clenched, he shoved Riptide into his pocket, almost missing the first few times with jerky arms. He didn't need any further temptation into violence right now.

Annabeth actually cracked a small smile. "Hey. Fine. Maybe I appreciate the white knight act a little, but if Hylla knew you were pulling this kind of crap I'm pretty sure she'd do unfortunate things to certain pieces of anatomy we both enjoy. And she'd be right. Being a woman doesn't mean I need a man hanging around for protection whenever I go out. Believe me: I can handle gross club pervs."

Percy's bottom lip protruded for a couple of seconds before he shrugged. "Fine. I wasn't saying you couldn't, FYI. All I was saying is it makes me mad. And as long as this doesn't mean I don't get to throw a punch at a guy who does that to you in front of me then I'm fine with the arrangement."

Annabeth smiled again, wider this time. She pulled a shirt out of the basket and began folding it, looking like a shark looming up behind some helpless prey. Percy feared for the shirt. "If for some bizarre reason I haven't already got him singing me a soprano apology, you can be my guest."

Percy grunted in grudging acceptance, mostly because he knew Annabeth was right and she could handle herself, but also because he was pretty sure he was about thirty seconds away from mummifying through thirst. He moved to the fridge and opened it; his eyes snagged on a bottle of juice. He seized it with both hands, banging it against the side of the fridge as he whisked it out. As he twisted the cap off, Annabeth clearing her throat made him pause.

"My head hurts too much to get a glass," he tried, hoping both looking and sounding as pathetic as he felt would resonate with Annabeth.

Instead, Annabeth abandoned her laundry and fetched a glass out of a cabinet, banging it down on the counter.

Percy winced as the sound crashed through his head like a freight train. He sighed and drew the glass towards him, filling it to the brim. "I deserved that, huh?" He gulped down most of the glass in one sitting, even as the cold juice made his teeth ache.

"You think? That juice better be a freaking miracle cure. We're supposed to be Skyping my dad and my stepmom in an hour so we get them first thing in California and if we could break this amazing news without you looking like something Nico had forced to claw itself out of the grave that would be great."

Percy sighed again, draining the glass before refilling it. "Again, I'm so sorry. And only partly because I cannot recover like I used to in college anymore. But when someone offers me the chance to celebrate the baby I can't help but take it. I still can't believe how amazing it is. I know it doesn't mean I shouldn't call but I still feel like I'm ready to burst over this."

Annabeth softened. "I know. I can't believe it either. And I'm happy you're happy." She moved forwards to wrap her arms around Percy; he kissed her on the top of her head and then leant his chin on it. "But… I freak out easy these days, Percy. I'm not sitting up at night freaking out about you anymore — it's the baby now, too. Every time I think about either of us not being around to watch this kid grow up I kind of lose it." She swallowed a lump in her throat; the material of Percy's shirt blurred in front of her. "I can't help it."

"Hey," Percy said. "I'm sorry for scaring you, okay? But I'm not going anywhere." He rolled Annabeth around so she had her back to him and began inching his way along her bunched trapezius muscles. It was where she always carried tension whenever she was worried. Right now it was the worst he'd ever felt it. "You're like a knotted steel cable," he chastised, increasing the pressure until he felt a modicum of release under his thumbs.

"And whose fault is that?" Annabeth rolled her neck, stretching it out as Percy worked on it. Percy reached a particularly stubborn knot and pressed it with his thumb. Annabeth hissed but pushed back against the pressure. "Oh gods yes. Right there."

"I'm sorry," Percy murmured, his lips brushing her ear. "Again. Some more. Did I mention I'm sorry? I was a dick. I should have thought about you waiting up for me."

"Yes." The word was a long, drawn out hiss and Percy couldn't tell if she was agreeing with him or yielding further to the massage. He was feeling some of the tension begin to seep away under his hands so he took it to be the latter. He hoped so, because he had a feeling the next thing he was going to say had the potential re-tie the knots he was working on and then some.

"So, last night, Nico and I were talking…" he started, increasing the depth of the massage as he did so and gaining only an unintelligible moan in reply from Annabeth. "And what you were saying, about us maybe not being around for this kid if the worst happens? Last night… I asked Nico to be our baby's godfather."

The muscles in Annabeth's shoulders sprung closed like a bear trap. "I'm sorry, you did _what_?" She spun around out of Percy's grasp to face him. "The massage was a bribery massage? You thought you'd spring this on me while I was high on endorphins?"

Percy folded his arms, shoving his hands beneath his armpits. He shifted from foot to foot, feeling Annabeth's gaze boring into him. "Can't a guy give his wife a massage because he loves her?"

"Or because he's trying to soften her up and prevent her questioning his _sanity_?"

"Why is it insane I asked Nico? What's so wrong with it? I know you and Nico don't always see eye to eye but come on, it's never over the big stuff. And I know he likes to push your buttons but firstly, you let them get pushed and secondly, I think Nico would—"

Annabeth cut him off with a slice of her hand through the air. "How drunk were you at the point where you potentially entrusted our child's entire future to _Nico_?"

The longer Percy stayed silent, apparently considering the question, the more intense the rage grew behind Annabeth's eyes. Percy hissed an inhale. It was like being back in the magma chamber of Mount St. Helens all over again.

"Oh my gods, you were wasted, weren't you?"

Percy frowned, tilting his head. "I wouldn't say wasted. More… merry. Celebrating baby merry. And the booze doesn't even factor into it. I would have asked him if I were stone cold sober. It's just last night I… wasn't."

Annabeth took a step back and tucked one hand into her hip; the other was being used to massage her eye socket in tight circles. "Please tell me her said no?" Her voice was low and flat; there may have been a glimmer of hope in it but it was hard to discern.

Percy leaned back against the counter harder than he meant to. His butt thudded home and his frown deepened. "No, actually. He said yes. I think he was pretty touched to be asked, in the weird way Nico conveys being touched. What's the big deal? I think he'd be a great godfather."

"The big deal is you drunkenly gave away future guardianship of our child without even consulting me, Percy."

"Hey, I wasn't that drunk. And like I said, I'd have asked Nico even if I were sober. You're acting like I promised our firstborn to Hera, not did the logical thing and asked one of our best friends to be godfather. Besides, you asked Rachel without consulting me."

"Okay, first of all, don't even _think_ about Hera and our kid in the same sentence. You never know who could be eavesdropping. I never want to hear you say that ever again. I do not want to give her any ideas. And I asked Rachel because Rachel is _Rachel._ She's the sensible choice! Plus, I assumed Rachel as godmother was pretty much a foregone conclusion for both of us. I didn't think we needed to discuss it any more than we needed to discuss whether the sky is blue."

"Well, yeah, she was. We didn't need to talk about it. I thought Nico was the same."

"Uh, _no_? Rachel is stable, sensible… maybe a little eccentric but it's a good trade-off for the first two. Nico is kind of none of those things. Also, whenever I think about starting a college fund for this kid and consider how much money Rachel has, I do consider leaving it on her doorstep and running away anyway because hot damn, our kid would never want for anything."

"Please don't abandon our kid on Rachel's doorstep."

"Do you know how much an Ivy League education costs per semester? And that's not the _point._ You asked _Nico_ to be our baby's godfather. As in, he's the first port of call in the depressingly likely scenario we're killed while the kid's still a minor? Gods, Percy. I love him, sure, but I also want to throttle the irritating bastard in equal measures. I mean that affectionately, of course, but you're talking about trusting him with our child. That's totally different. I wouldn't trust him with a _plant_."

"Only because he can kill a plant by looking at it the wrong way."

Annabeth actually had to put some further physical distance between herself and Percy, jerking her upper body back from him. Otherwise, she didn't feel like she had enough perspective to look at the statement with the disdain she felt it deserved.

Percy held up his hands. "Wait. That came out wrong. So not what I meant. Sure he has the thing with houseplants, but our baby is not a houseplant. He's not going to be able to kill it with one look and even if he could, he wouldn't."

Annabeth was still rubbing at her eye, where a headache was brewing. Apparently, disbelief and incredulity caused wicked migraines. "Percy, Nico is… Look, I love him. I do. But he splits his time between the Underworld and up here. He can disappear in the blink of an eye and does so. Frequently. He could be at Camp Half-Blood in the morning, at Camp Jupiter in the afternoon and making an ass imprint on our couch by the evening. Sometimes, I think he's still struggling with human interaction at a basic level. He can be so like his dad it's scary. And you want him to raise our child if we can't? There's no kind of stability about him and his life."

"He has us. And Rachel."

"In this scenario, we are dead. No more." Annabeth punctuated this by slashing her hands through the air. "If we're not there to raise our kid we are definitely not going to be around to keep Nico stable, are we?"

"Annabeth, do you seriously think you're ever going to find someone as loyal as Nico? He would crawl over hot coals and broken glass for either of us in a heartbeat, even if he would deny he was doing it all the way across. There is nothing he wouldn't do to protect the people who matter to him, like us. Like the baby."

Annabeth hesitated, the rubbing of her forehead slowing as her brow crinkled, despite the fact doing so was making the pain worse. She sighed as the wrinkles in her forehead sank back to smooth skin. "It's not only about loyalty, though, is it? I'm not saying I don't trust him. I'm not saying he wouldn't jump in front of a sword for us—"

"Because he has. Many times. And we've done the same for him; we always will. Well, you would, pre-pregnancy. Right now, you have someone else's life to be thinking about, but the point still stands."

"Agreed. In a heartbeat. I'm not doubting him. I'm not questioning any of those qualities. I love him like a brother, and fight with him like he's my brother, too, but he's not exactly Captain Responsible, is he? Off the battlefield, we're talking everyday stuff he's going to have to be around for. Band recitals. Sports games. He's actually going to have to get up in the morning and fix breakfast outside of last night's pizza and tar-like coffee. I'm not saying he won't love the kid but can you imagine Nico trying to give The Talk? Or going to a PTA meeting?"

Percy couldn't stop his eyes widening or stifle a wince despite himself. "Hopefully the kid will take after you in that scenario because if it gets my genes and the teacher lays into its academic performance, Nico would probably tell the teacher to go fuck themselves and set Alecto on them."

"Exactly. And I have a feeling his answer to playground bullies will be to raise the dead to perform a little payback and put some kid on a psychiatrist's couch for the next forty years."

"I thought you were arguing _against_ Nico being godfather? Raising the dead to get back at a bully sounds like a pretty proportional response to me."

Annabeth glared at him. "Of course you'd think so. But you can't go round churning up the local cemetery every time someone is mean to your kid. I think it sends the wrong kind of message, don't you? I get why Nico is the way he is. He had to do and see things no kid should have to do. He had no childhood at all. Add to it the guilt and self-loathing over being who he is and it's a miracle he's still standing here today. He is a survivor and the toughest person I know but I don't see those things going together with raising a child. How can someone who never got to be a kid care for one? I'm sorry, I just don't see it."

"It's not like he'll have to do it alone. He has Will," Percy insisted. "No matter what, Will is going to be around. Who else do you want sticking Band-Aids on scraped knees than an ex-Apollo Cabin medic? Plus, you know Will has always been a calming influence on Nico. And like I said, Rachel will be there, too. Plus my mom and Paul, and your dad and step-mom and your brothers… It takes a village, right? And this is only _if_ the worst happens. Who says it will?"

"I guess. But—"

"Look, as far as I'm concerned, Nico has everything I would look for in someone to protect my kid if I couldn't do it. The world we live in sucks. If I'm gone, I want someone watching over my kid with Big Three powers. Thalia isn't an option and we can always ask Jason, but Nico feels right to me. I'm not saying Jason wouldn't do a great job, but my gut tells me Nico has got this. He would do anything to make sure the kid was safe and happy. The Nico who would maybe have to raise our kid wouldn't be the same Nico we know today. Things would be different. I believe in him, Annabeth. I believe he can do this. I trust him with my life. More than that, I trust him with _your_ life and our baby's life. And so do you. He would sooner die than let anything happen to our baby if he had to raise it."

Annabeth sighed. Again. Her left hand found its way to her stomach; her thumb twisted her wedding ring as it rested there. "Okay," she said at last. "You're right." She turned away from Percy and dragged a hand back through her hair, eventually sinking into one of the kitchen chairs. "Gods, I suck. I didn't mean to be so down on him. I'm not saying I think he's a bad person or a bad friend."

Percy sat down opposite her, reaching for her hands, which were busy smoothing a towel she had folded earlier into oblivion. "I know you weren't saying that," he said.

"Good. Because I don't think that. I mean, do I think he's infuriating? Sure. But that's a whole different issue. All I'm worried about is when you look at Nico, do you really equate him with being a dad? For one thing, black really shows up baby spit up."

"He would never let anything happen to our kid," Percy said.

Annabeth looked at Percy for a long time, then nodded. "You're right. And you know, if our kid turns out to be half as tough and resourceful as Nico I am going to be insanely proud."

Percy leaned forward across the table to kiss Annabeth on the forehead. "I know. Me too. He'll be a good dad if he has to be. And who says he will? He might be a slightly strange dad, sure, and I'm not seeing a station wagon in his future but who needs one of those? Besides, we're demigods. We live in the world of unusual dads. I want this for our baby and I want it for him." He paused. "Are we decided? Because I have to go and get coffee now and about a dozen aspirin before my head explodes. I'm starting to think I'll too old to be shooting back anything skidding down a bar in a shot glass on fire."

"No kidding," Annabeth said dryly as Percy got up and made for the coffeemaker. "Gods, do you remember the days where we could wake up and walk off the night before?"

Percy grunted as he poured himself a cup of coffee and took a sip. "Are you kidding me? Of course I remember. I hate young me." He took another sip of coffee and then put it down so he could stretch. As he did so, his shirt rode up, exposing some writing in permanent marker on his stomach.

Annabeth narrowed her eyes. "Do you have a phone number written on your stomach?"

Percy blinked and lifted up his shirt, staring down at the writing for a while before pieces of hazy memory began slotting themselves together. "Oh. Uh. I got cornered by someone called Derek. Or… Chad? I don't know. All I remember is he was bigger than me and wouldn't take 'I'm straight' for an answer. I think Nico pretty much fell off his chair laughing."

Annabeth cocked an eyebrow. "And this is the guy you want to raise our kid?"

"Yes," Percy said, picking up his coffee and smiling into the mug. "I wouldn't have anyone else."

The smile was contagious; Annabeth couldn't stop it transferring to her lips. "Fine. I get it. Now will you go change out of last night's clothes so we can Skype my parents?"

"I'll take a shower."

"That's all I ask. While you do that, I'll book that place that does bottomless brunch for you, me, Sally and Paul so we can tell them. You'll finally get your bacon."

"And pancakes oh my gods yes I love you so much please don't ever leave me."

"What about Chad or Derek?"

Percy snorted. "That guy did not eat pancakes. Or any carbs. Seriously. Not with a body like that."

Annabeth frowned at him. "Uh… something you want to tell me?"

"You know what? I'll take that shower now." Percy turned around and headed towards the bedroom.

"A cold one?"

Percy stopped dead. "You're already texting Nico about this, aren't you?"

Annabeth's thumbnails clicked over her phone. "I have no idea what you mean."

"I'll just quit while I'm ahead, shall I?"

"Probably best," Annabeth said as her thumb reached across to send.


	6. May I

**_May I_**

* * *

 ** _A child will be born in day of night_**

 ** _As Boreas reaches utmost might._**

 _Through an endless expanse of nothingness a baby wailed; shrieking, piercing, desperate, defenceless._

 ** _This heir to Wisdom, Sea and Sky_**

 ** _Could be the gods' greatest ally._**

 _The golden spires of Olympus rose to new, glorious heights, stretching up towards the sun._

 ** _Yet when twins collide,_**

 ** _Unleashing Nyx on a noontime ride,_**

 ** _The void will consume all alight_**

 ** _And with this power, grow its might._**

 _The once-roaring altar fires dimmed to suffocated embers. Smoke belched from extinguished torches and braziers, further fogging the air. Overhead, red lightning flared between blooming clouds._

 _Everywhere flames guttered, spawning darkness. The darkness grew and spread, roiling, twisting, sending out oozing, greedily groping tendrils. Instead of recoiling from flames and light, it seemed to drink it. Once-roaring flames sputtered feebly in useless protest._

 _On Earth, lights were smothered. The rolling darkness stole from car headlights and traffic lights. Steel crunched on steel and rubber screeched against asphalt as cars slid into each other, unable to see where to go._

 _The screens of Times Square burst into a billion LED volcanoes of smoke and glass, which wisped to nothing in the air._

 ** _The pit will stir as dark devours,_**

 ** _An awakening to crush Olympus' towers._**

 _The godly city moaned in pain. Cracks yawned in the streets and snaked their way up the side of buildings. A cloud of dust billowed from the trembling citadel as roofs sank and walls crumbled. Columns toppled with the weight of a hundred redwoods at the mercy of an insane chainsaw-wielding giant, the marble scattering in skittering fragments on impact like a fortune teller casting bones._

 _Below on Earth, the swirling darkness birthed monsters. They slid from its cloying depths and fanned out across the blocks of Manhattan. More and more monsters slithered from the night, slime and mucus clinging to them and oozing from their fingers, squelching in their footsteps._

 _A greyish-green twilight fell. Streetlights fizzled to nothing, shedding sparks to rattle on sidewalks like hail. Windows blanked. Devoid of the light behind them, the panes of glass yawning vertically up from the streets were endless black mirrors, reflecting the monster invasion and the crackle of crimson lightning overhead._

 _Blood wound over sidewalks and the roads. It puddled in cracks and depressions, slicked over curbs and into the gutters. The creeping tendrils were darker than they had any right to be, only revealing red so deep rubies would be envious when lightning fractured through their surface._

 _Bodies mounted. Great piles of former humans, now shells, were discarded, heaped to rival the skyscrapers. They were the springs at the heads of the running rivulets of blood. Lightning fluttered over empty eyes clouded like sea glass, gleamed on smeared blood, threw the skeletons that would soon emerge from beneath the cooling flesh into stark relief in faces, ribs, throats and feet._

 _Here and there, reaching fingers twitched for a rescue that would never come._

 _ **The child born below darkness deep  
**_ _  
_ _ **May not get its soul to keep  
**_ _  
_ _ **For it has the power to be the key  
**_ _  
_ _ **To unlock the pit's prison and set him free.**_

 _There was a procession through the inky streets. Monsters kicked aside smoking, flaking, blackened lumps, twisted by heat and agony so that they only vaguely resembled the humans they'd once been. Chants rose on the otherwise still air. Spawned deep in the lower octaves of monster vocal chords, they reverberated and rumbled among New York's canyons of glass and steel._

 ** _To secure his rise to conquer all_**

 ** _The blood of this innocent must fall._**

 _The monsters moved towards Central Park. The walls surrounding the Park turned to dust, their iron railings bubbling into molten metal puddles. The procession continued unchecked, the grass withering beneath its feet. Trees steamed and leaves burst into ash as the sap and water inside them evaporated, leaving them nothing but husks of splinter-ridden wood._

 _The Pond frothed a poisonous dark green. Gloopy bubbles snapped open on the surface, disgorging dead fish. Black waves of sludge broke over the shores._

 _The Door of Orpheus gaped open._

 ** _If blood spills before the twins abate_**

 ** _The pit will ascend to end all fate._**

 _A child screamed. A single, piercing note, long and loud, managed to puncture the heavy air. It rang over the city._

 _Then came a new darkness, one more terrifying and more complete than even the one that currently reigned, black paint slashed across a finished canvas. And then there was nothing. Silence roared like a jet engine._

* * *

Rachel woke.

And sobbed.

The bedclothes tangled around her trembling limbs. Her face was wet. Wrenching herself free from the clutches of her sheets, she jerkily flailed for her lamp. She caught the switch more accidentally than by design; her spasming arm swept everything off the nightstand. The accumulated crap crashed to the floor, the lamp spearing a beam into the corner of the room. Pencils bounced and skittered, rolling every which way; her sketchbook splatted open onto the carpet.

Jabbing her legs out of bed she tried to stand but they buckled beneath her; she lost the top layers of her knees to rug burn. Another strangled sob emerged from her throat as she tried to crawl towards the bathroom.

She stopped dead, her way blocked.

A spindly pair of legs bulging with varicose veins and clad in wrinkled, laddered stockings puddled around the ankles loomed in her vision. Rachel's nostrils were assaulted with the smell of burnt sugar.

She screamed and threw herself backwards, smashing her hand into the corner of her nightstand. Pain seared through her knuckles but was quickly drowned by rising terror in her chest. Shoving hair out of her face she looked up at the person standing next to her bed.

The woman was tall but slightly built, with sallow skin stretched tightly over too-prominent cheekbones. Tufts of grizzled white hair stood up in all directions from her scalp. It some places it was short and broken, almost like it had been torn out by its roots and was struggling to regrow.

Her worn and dirty clothes drowned her. Her sleeves were fraying. From beneath a scorched and filthy apron, what could be seen of her skirt was covered in floury handprints and greasy smears of substances identifiable only by the gods. The cut and patterns, the fading and fraying and bobbled material, suggested she hadn't bought anything new for herself in at least twenty years.

The soles of her carpet slippers flapped away from the uppers; on her left foot, gnarled and yellowed toenails peeked unclipped from the tatters of her stockings and the remains of her slipper.

"Who are you?" Rachel managed to gasp out, using the bed to pull herself back to her feet. Her fingers curled into the wrought-iron bedframe. "What do you want?"

"Did you have a nightmare?" the woman asked, tilting her head and stepping more into the erratic beam of light shed by the lamp. As she did so, the light gleamed on eyes that looked clouded by cataracts, but she was totally certain of her steps as she moved towards Rachel.

"Don't come any closer. I'm warning you."

The woman reached into the pocket of her apron and Rachel's heart leapt into her throat. She sprang up onto the bed and vaulted over to the other side, but the woman was impossibly fast for what looked like her frailty and lack of vision. Before Rachel made it towards her bedroom door, the woman had rounded the bed and grabbed her wrist with a grip like iron.

Green sparks leapt between them at her touch. The air fizzled and the room swelled with ozone.

"Here. This will help you sleep."

The woman produced a mouldering sandwich from the pocket in her apron, but Rachel's vision was dimming at the edges. All she could see was the woman's eyes. The cloudiness was swirling away like it was being cleared by a stiff breeze, but instead of blue skies the woman's eyes were glowing green.

Rachel tried to scream again but her voice died to a croak in her throat; as she opened her mouth, wisps of green energy emerged, curling and undulating like the current in a stream. The woman inhaled and they coiled into her throat. Green light began to surround the woman, pulsing outwards from her larynx to form a halo around her head.

Rachel's vision shrank to pinpoints. The room whirled around her. Then blood surged back into her hand as the woman released her grip and Rachel's entire body sagged. She hit the floor hard enough to knock the wind out of her; the last thing she saw before her vision left her completely was a flash of green light and the sandwich spattering to the floor in front of her face.


	7. May II

_May_ _II_

* * *

Rachel couldn't breathe.

Her mouth was gulping air like a fish out of water but her frantic inhales all had barbs attached and were lodging in her throat, never reaching lungs screaming for air. Suffocating. She was suffocating. She was going to run out of air and die right on her bedroom floor. Blood throbbed in her head.

Her vision was totally dark. She pressed her trembling fingers to her bare eyes; her eyeballs burned at the contact and she could feel them flicking and twitching beneath her fingertips but she couldn't _see._

Breathing turned to desperate wheezing as she struggled to suck air into her lungs. Her heart continued to pound; it felt like it was going to dash itself to pieces against her sternum.

"Help me." She was so desperate for air she tried speaking on the inhale; the noise that came out was strangled, high-pitched and barely recognisable. Just those two words felt like they'd torn themselves from the lining of her throat, leaving it raw.

A light seared into view, all-encompassing and burning through the otherwise total darkness she locked in. Then the light faded and she was once again left with nothing but an endless sea of eternal night. Rachel was suddenly aware of someone else in the room. Her hand shot out; she grabbed an ankle and squeezed until her fingers and wrist popped with the effort. She tried speaking again but couldn't summon a single word.

"Rachel! What happened? Who did this to you?"

"Help…" It didn't even sound like a word, more like a chair leg screeching across a tiled floor, but whoever was in the room knelt and dragged her into his lap.

"Hey. I got you."

A new light illuminated her vision but this one was gentler, golden in hue and warm, unlike the previous cold blast spawned in the aftermath of the unleashing of a nuclear bomb. Rachel was being rocked back and forth in the lap as the light surrounded her, making her eyes prickle with pins and needles and opening her throat and chest.

As if her lungs had been squeezed by a giant rubber band that had just snapped, she could suddenly breathe again. She surged upright, dragging in so much air that her ribs began to protest at the expansion before letting it out again. There were stars in front of her vision but as these cleared, they revealed more and more of her bedroom until her vision was back in full.

She turned around. Apollo was kneeling on the floor of her bedroom, pale and trembling, eyeing her up and down.

"Rachel, are you okay? What the hell was that?"

Rachel shook her head. "I don't… I don't…" Her stomach roiled. She lurched to her feet and stumbled towards the bathroom, smashing her hand on the doorframe as she lunged desperately for it. She scrabbled for the light cord, yanking it and leaving it swinging and twisting like a new-hanged man. The sink was closest. She lurched towards it, slumping with both hands onto the porcelain so hard it sent shocks up into her shoulders. Acid burned in her throat. There was no way of stopping her stomach rising up and spattering bile into the basin.

Dry heaving racked her body for a while; when that was done she pushed herself backwards off the sink, slamming into the wall and sliding down it to the floor. Blood slashed down glittering white tile from her ruined knuckles.

Apollo appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame. His perfect features were contracted into a frown, his eyes narrowed as he regarded her quizzically.

"Don't look at me like that," Rachel said, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. "I'm sorry if almost getting the life sucked out of me ruined some hot date you were on. How inconsiderate, I know."

"I wasn't on a hot date. Not that I couldn't get a hot date if I wanted to because, well, look at me, but I was actually working. Sometimes it feels like all work and no play, almost like I'm becoming my sister. Do you know how scary that is?" Apollo gave himself a shake. "Seriously, it terrifies me. She never has any fun."

"Yeah, you're a real wage slave," Rachel muttered. She nuzzled her head against the cool tile behind her, trying to let it soothe her headache away. Her eyes closed all but a crack, just enough to allow the faintest glimmer of light through to reassure her that her vision would still be there when she opened them again.

"Thank you! I'm so glad you've noticed. Now if you could just tell my sister—" Rachel cut him off by opening one eye and cocking an eyebrow at him. "Sarcasm? Right. I knew that. But seriously, I was actually working. You had a prophecy on the way. I was preparing for that. But before it got to you… it vanished."

Rachel's eyes flew open. "It vanished? An entire prophecy just vanished and you're only thinking to mention that now?"

"Yeah. When should I have mentioned it? You didn't seem like you'd have been that interested while you were lying in there on the floor."

Rachel sighed. "Fine. I'll give you that one. But why would a prophecy vanish? Surely they don't just grow legs and walk out the door. Are you sure you didn't just misplace it?"

"One prophecy? Maybe. It's not exactly unheard of. I do get distracted. Or sometimes inspiration strikes for a kick ass haiku, and I accidentally write it on top of a prophecy. Never an important one. Well, usually. And if it's not a haiku, sometimes I spot someone I want to get to know a little better, if you know what I mean."

Rachel squinted at him.

"Oh, that's right. You don't know what I mean. Sorry, my bad. I forget you haven't had a lot of experience in this area. Which… is also kind of my bad. Oops. Well, when a god and a mortal fall madly in lust because they're both smoking hot—"

He was cut off as Rachel swiped a hand through the air. "I know exactly what you mean. I may be an eternal maiden but I wasn't born yesterday. You get distracted because you're a horndog. That's always come through loud and clear. I'm frowning because you said you've mislaid _one_ prophecy in the past, as if you've mislaid more than one this time?"

Apollo stood up straight and folded his arms across his chest. "Hey. You sound like my dad now. _I_ didn't lose them. The scrolls are all there. I've been busting my peachy ass at Delphi requesting scroll capsules down the tubes. You try looking back at over two thousand years of scrolls. Just reading the labels on the capsules is hard enough. Some of my followers have had shitty handwriting. I should really do something about that. Maybe I could become the god of calligraphy. All of my haikus could be preserved forever more in stunning handwriting." He paused, looking off into the distance as he considered his latest amazing idea. "I'll ask my dad."

"Okay, can we go back to your main point, please?"

"What? Oh. Right. Anyway, every time I request a scroll, whether it's from 8 BC or eight weeks ago last Tuesday, it's blank. My dad is so mad, but I didn't _do_ anything. Like it's my fault someone has stolen the words?"

The bottom fell out of Rachel's stomach. She reached up to her throat, remembering the glowing voice box of the woman who had attacked her.

"It's gone."

"The prophecy? Yeah, that's what I _just said_. Did you hit your head? That's bad for mortals, right? Maybe I should heal you some more."

Rachel swatted him away as he tried to reach for her brow again. "No I did not hit my head. Listen to me. The Oracle. You need to find the Oracle. _Now_."

Apollo blinked at her, his forehead furrowing. There was a question forming on his lips until he looked her up and down. His eyes widened. He sat down hard on the edge of the bath. "Oh." He frowned hard, shaking his head, his eyes flicking over the bathroom tiles. "I can't… she's not anywhere. It's like she's just… _gone_." Panic hitched his voice as he looked up at her in desperation.

"Go," Rachel said, barely having time to shield her eyes as he vanished in the same searing atomic blast he'd arrived in.

Apollo left behind a gaping silence. Rachel's eyes swept the floor in front of her, back and forth across the gleaming white tile. Eventually she hauled herself up using the sink and turned the taps on full, sluicing the bile down the drain. She watched it swirl for a while until the water cleared, steam billowing into the air and fogging the mirror over the sink, blurring her to a blobby outline.

The faucets ran until the hot water gave out; she began to see her reflection in the mirror again for the lack of steam. Not wanting to be confronted with that, she padded back into the bedroom, snatching her cell phone off the bed and using speed dial. It rang endlessly. A bubble of panic rose in her chest. Then it was answered.

"Percy. Please. You have to come. I saw… I don't know. I saw something. I think it was the baby. The baby is in danger. Now it's gone. It's all gone. You have to come. Please."

She sank onto the bed. Her phone slumped from her ear, still emitting Percy's tinny voice.

Rachel put a hand over her mouth; a sob escaped anyway. There, she cried.


	8. May III

_May III_

Nico and Will were already in Rachel's penthouse by the time Percy arrived. Every light was burning. No one was talking.

Rachel had flung on a long knitted cardigan over her nightclothes, trying to keep the chill of the night from her sweat-damp skin. Her hair was sticking up at odd angles, itself matted with the nightmare's sweat. It was perhaps the most out of control Percy had ever seen it. Under the harsh spotlights (all the better for painting under, apparently), Percy saw tear tracks underneath her dark-circled eyes.

The cardigan was strained around Rachel's body, held taut by fingers woven tightly into the wool. Percy was in no doubt it would never be the same shape again after tonight. She was in an armchair with her knees pulled into her chest, rocking slightly. A chunk of hair was in her mouth. Saliva stained the strands the colour of drying blood.

Nico was on the couch, clad in boxers and a t-shirt. Will was also wearing boxers but had grabbed a hoodie — sons of Apollo felt especially keenly the chill of shadow travel — and had one of its tassels in his mouth. He was perched on the arm of Rachel's armchair, rubbing up and down Rachel's back. A brown paper bag was crumpled in his fist and his body seemed coiled, but for what Percy couldn't tell, given Will had shown no recognition Percy had even stepped off the elevator.

Unlike Rachel and Will, Nico could have been mistaken for relaxed by a casual observer, sprawled as he was across the couch, but Percy barely had to look at him to register the tension in his body. There was a certain way Nico held his shoulders, a way his hand rested at his hip even in the absence of his sword, which betrayed the way he felt despite his relaxed demeanour.

The elevator doors clanged closed.

Nico got to his feet, nodding a greeting at Percy as he headed towards him. "Care to tell me what the hell is going on?" he murmured urgently. His lips hardly moved as he looked back over his shoulder at Rachel.

He turned back to Percy, shaking his head. "When we got here, Rachel was having a full-blown meltdown. Sobbing on the kitchen floor and breathing into a paper bag. Will had to take it off her because apparently that's not what you do if you're hyperventilating because of… some doctor shit. I don't know. Thank god her mother still insists Rachel visits the same shrink she saw when her hamster died and he plays it fast and loose with his prescription pad. Will found some Xanax in the bathroom. I nearly took one myself. But she is a _wreck_ and won't tell us why. I don't even know if she can speak. She hasn't since we got here."

Percy glanced over Nico's shoulder at Rachel and shook his head. "I don't know. I'm sorry. She called me and she didn't make any sense. She just said something about the baby and how something was all gone? I thought something bad had happened to her. I knew you'd be able to get here quicker than I would, so I called you before I left. She hasn't told me, either. Not really. I just heard it was about the baby and… that was it."

Rachel pulled the cardigan yet further around her. Percy could practically hear the scream of each stitch. Spitting the strand of hair out of her mouth, Rachel cleared her throat. Will jumped slightly, finally registering Percy's presence in the room with a nod.

"No Annabeth?" Rachel asked, staring at the closed elevator door behind Percy as if she were expecting Annabeth to materialise out of the polished metal. Her eyes looked glassy and her speech was slow and deliberate, but she still caught everyone staring at her. "I know. I can speak. All hail Xanax."

"No. I... she was sleeping."

"So were we," Nico muttered, an eyebrow quirking. "How come she gets to stay in bed?"

"When you're having my baby, you can sleep all you want," Percy said.

Nico snorted. "Thanks, but I think I'll pass."

"You told her you were coming, though, didn't you?" Rachel pressed, unfolding her knees and leaning forward in the chair. "You told her what I Saw?"

Percy took a deep breath and braced himself. "Look, no one freak out here, but... no. I kind of didn't say anything. I mean, no offence, Rachel, but I didn't really understand what you told me. What's to say? We don't actually have anything to go on yet. Why freak her out when it could be nothing?"

Rachel's mouth and cardigan sprang open in shock. "Percy, what the _fuck_? I mean... No, there's no eloquent way to say this, what the _actual fuck_? Did you not hear what I said? Your baby is in danger. You think this is something you should be keeping from Annabeth?"

Percy stayed silent.

Will scrubbed his hand down his face. His eyebrows were knitted into a tight frown. "Percy, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with keeping something like this from Annabeth."

"Hey, no one asked you to be here," Percy snapped, rounding on Will. His eyes crackled. "So off you go. Then you wouldn't have to keep anything from her. Go on. Leave."

Will swallowed and gave a small shrug, returning his eyes to the coffee table.

" _I_ asked him to be here." Nico stepped between Will and Percy with his lip curled. "Don't take this out on him because you're freaking out. Whatever this is, it sucks. I get that. But hey, welcome to our lives. We're here to help so _back off._ "

Percy met this with stony silence but Nico made no attempt to back down. Rachel looked between them, gathering the cardigan around her again. Will edged to his feet, his eyes matching Rachel's in their darting movements. His hands twitched slightly above his waist, as if he were worried he was going to have to jump between them, not a totally ridiculous assumption seeing as how the air in the apartment was suddenly spitting like bacon that had been tossed in a hot pan.

Eventually, Percy's shoulders slumped and he gave a weary head tilt. The tension dissipated. He spun on his heel to stalk back to the elevator; his footsteps abruptly ceded to a loud crunching crash. Rachel, Will and Nico jumped.

"Percy...?" Rachel tried, stepping towards him like she was testing out stepping stones over a lake of lava. When she reached him she winced. "Oh, gods."

Percy was frozen in place, his hand buried up to his wrist in the drywall. A trickle of plaster dust hissed to the floor from the hole.

"Will, grab the first aid kit. It's—"

"Under the sink in the bathroom. Yup. FYI, you never have to tell me or my siblings where you keep the bandages. Sure, we can't fly or create tsunamis or summon the dead, but we know where every piece of gauze in the Tristate Area is. Be right back." Will disappeared into the penthouse.

"He's... kidding, right?" Rachel asked Nico, blinking at the spot Will had occupied moments before.

Nico's shrug was lazy as he sauntered over to exam the carnage Percy had created, which he regarded with a quirk of his eyebrow and an eye roll. "Eh. You know what? Even after all this time, I have no idea. But if he can, is it seriously the weirdest godly parent side-effect you've heard of?"

"Yeah. You're right. Not even within a trillion miles."

"Sorry about the wall."

Rachel turned back to Percy, tucking her hands into her hips. "So, he speaks, huh?" she said, her nostrils flaring. "And does it look like I give a crap about the wall? You've probably broken your idiot hand. If you hadn't already made a pretty good job of pulverising yourself, I'd be doing it for you. Come on, let's get you out of there." She gripped his wrist; it was already damp with a gritty pink paste of blood and plaster dust. "On three, okay? One, two... _three_."

Percy's hand slid free of the drywall along with several more chunks of plaster.

"I thought it would be solid," Percy said sheepishly as Will returned with a bowl of hot water and the first aid kit under his arm. "Seriously, you're worth a billion dollars and I can put my fist through your wall? Someone's contractor needs to get fired."

Rachel's eyebrows swept into her hairline. " _Someone_ needs to not put their fists anywhere near my walls in the first place."

Will examined Percy's hand and chewed his tongue in disapproval. He jerked his head over to the couch and, once Percy was settled, sat opposite him on the coffee table to bathe his hand. The water rapidly turned pink. Will gave a particularly sharp jab of Percy's knuckles with the washcloth; Percy winced.

"Oh, I'm sorry, does that hurt? Maybe that will remind you not to try and cram your hand inside the building next time you get mad."

Percy sighed. "Yeah. And I'm sorry, Will. This is what I should have done earlier instead of biting your head off."

Will wrang the washcloth in his hands with such savagery it made Rachel's cardigan torture look like a skip through tulip fields. "You shouldn't have done either."

Percy tilted his head and made a non-committal noise in the back of his throat. Clearly, he only agreed with half of what Will had said. Will looked up briefly at Percy and then bent over his hand again. His motions were gentler this time.

"I don't think it's broken," Will pronounced eventually, dumping the washcloth in the basin one last time. "You were lucky on that front. And I think I got all the debris out. The cuts don't look too bad, either. Keep it clean and you should be fine. Probably won't even need any nectar. Rachel, do you have something cold? A bag of peas or something? It'll help with the swelling."

Rachel nodded and turned towards the kitchen.

"I'm sorry," Percy said again. "And thanks. I shouldn't have lost my cool with you. Nico's right. Whatever this is, it's not your fault. It's no one's fault. And it means a lot that you're here in the middle of the night. I just..." He sighed, accepting a bundle of ice in a towel from Rachel and placing it on his hand. The cold tingled along his nerves, starting to replace the throbbing pain. "Thanks."

"You just what?" Rachel prompted, sinking into the couch next to Percy and tucking her legs underneath her.

Percy shifted the ice. Cubes rattled against each other. "Annabeth told me, way back at the beginning of the year, that she'd been to the doctor. It was bad news because the doctor said she probably wouldn't be able to conceive. Something about scar tissue. When I heard something bad was going to happen to the baby, I thought… yeah."

"Intrauterine adhesions?" Will closed eyes. "Gods. I guess it's kind of inevitable, huh?" Anger flared across his eyes. "It's not fucking _fair_." He slammed the first aid kit closed, banging both latches down. "After all you guys have done for Olympus, after—"

Nico rounded the back of the coffee table and placed his hand on Will's shoulder, rubbing his thumb up and down Will's back. Will sank back into the touch, although he still looked mutinous.

"Easy," Nico said. "You're going to make me be the sane rational one, and no one wants that. In fact, I'm pretty sure the very idea would terrify a whole bunch of people. Before you go and make your very own hole in the wall, remember it doesn't matter. Annabeth's pregnant."

Will sighed and added his own hand on top of Nico's. Their fingers briefly intertwined before Will folded his arms. "Fine. You're right. Doesn't mean I don't get to be pissed it was so hard in the first place, though."

Percy offered a ghost of a smile. "Thanks. But Annabeth said it would be hard for her to carry to term, even if she did get pregnant. So if you want to be mad about something, there's still plenty to get mad about. It's why I don't want to tell her straight away. I don't want to stress her out. The last thing she needs right now is to hear this. I don't..." He swallowed and looked down at the towel. Though Will had stopped most of the blood, some was still blossoming through the cotton. "If we can deal with this and tell her afterwards, I think it will be better for her. For both of them. I don't want to make her so stressed something happens and she... the baby..."

Rachel leaned forward and tapped Percy on the knee. "Hey. I Saw Annabeth giving birth, remember? She's going to be fine. The baby's going to be fine. It doesn't need a neurotic daddy freaking out over every last thing."

"You saw one possible future. You're always saying the future isn't set in stone. What if this changes things? What if me telling her all of this triggers a new future where we lose the baby? And from what you told me on the phone, you also saw what sounds like an apocalypse. Does that mean the world is definitely going to end, like all your other apocalypse visions? Or was it a warning so we can make it better? I have to believe it's the last one, so what if you seeing Annabeth _giving birth_ was a warning, something we have to stop? Because I'm not gambling on stressing her out with this and risking losing this baby."

Silence again as everyone chewed on that piece of information.

"Annabeth's a big girl," Nico said in the end. "Wait. Okay, let's strike that from the record and pretend I didn't say it, because if it gets out she'll kill me. I don't mean it in _that_ way. But she's a grown ass woman, Percy. She's independent, she's got a stubborn streak a mile wide, she was literally born to the goddess of figuring shit out and she likes to make her own decisions. All good things. It's who she is. But are you seriously telling me she's going to be glad you kept this from her? I stand by what Will said earlier. Keeping this from her stinks, even if it were possible. Which... I'm pretty sure it's not gonna be. You have _met_ her, right?"

Percy looked to Will. "The first three months, they're the hardest part, right? I mean, the riskiest part of the pregnancy. Once three months are up, things get easier?"

Will raised his hands and shook his head. "Percy, no. Don't ask me this. I'm not an OB/GYN. I don't—"

"Please. You're the only one here who has even the faintest idea about this stuff."

Rachel snorted. "Which is kind of ironic, really. I mean, Percy's pretty much the only one here who's even seen someone else's vagina in real life apart from coming out of one, but—" She looked up to three pairs of eyes staring at her. "Oh, wow. Sorry. I have no filter tonight, apparently. Bad Xanax. Very bad. Now I remember why I don't take them. It's worse than margaritas." A blush crept up from the dip between her collarbones to consume her face. "In fact, can we pretend I didn't say anything? I'd like that."

Nico raised a nonplussed hand. "Uh... I'll vote for it."

"Amen. Motion carried," Will agreed.

"The first trimester," Percy pressed, shaking off Rachel's brief interlude despite Will and Nico's traumatised faces. "Afterwards, things are less risky, right?"

Will sighed and squirmed in his seat. Percy's eyes were boring into him. "Please don't take my advice over an _actual_ doctor, but... typically less than two percent of all miscarriages happen outside the first twelve weeks of pregnancy. _Typically._ They're known as late miscarriages."

Percy nodded and settled back into the couch.

"That doesn't _mean_ anything, though," Will said quickly. "Annabeth's isn't a typical pregnancy, even without the demigod stuff thrown in. Just because fewer miscarriages happen after the first trimester doesn't mean... Look, I want her and the baby to be okay, right? But me reading in some book at some point that it's less likely to happen from the second trimester onwards doesn't mean squat, okay? Don't take my word for it."

"Okay." Percy experimentally flexed his knuckles under the bundle of ice. The pain returned, jangling up and down his wrist. More blood seeped into the towel. "I know it's going to be hard, but I want to try and keep a lid on this until she's over those first three months, okay? Please. Just give me three months to try and fix this first. I can't… I feel better about telling her once we're in safer territory. And don't worry about her being mad at you. I'll say I swore you all to secrecy at swordpoint if I have to."

"Yeah, like you're going to stop her coming after us with a chainsaw once she finds out we all knew this before she did," Nico muttered. "It's going to be like Thanksgiving and Annabeth is not the turkey in that scenario, you know?"

"Don't tell me you're scared of Annabeth?" Percy said with a grin. "Come on, you made it through Tartarus."

Nico snorted. "Yeah, I did. And I'd rather go back there a hundred times than have Annabeth in a homicidal rage at me. I know I bait her for fun, and believe me it's _a lot_ of fun, but I've never had her look at me the way she looks at monsters or _The_ _Times_ cryptic crossword. And yeah, call me crazy, but I'd like to _not_ be murdered, thanks."

Percy rolled his eyes. "I'll deal with Annabeth. Don't worry. I'll protect you from the big bad pregnant one."

Nico let out a bark of laughter. "What, you seriously think you'll be around to save me? Percy, once she finds out you're behind this, she is going to go praying mantis on you. She's mated and as soon as she hears what you did, she is going straight for your head."

Percy's forehead wrinkled. "You have got to stop him watching nature documentaries," he said to Will. "He's starting to sound smart and I have enough scary shit on my plate right now."

"You want to talk scary? Try coming home to him half a bottle of tequila down singing _The Circle of Life_ as a lion takes down a wildebeest."

Rachel started giggling. She tried to turn it into coughs but got nowhere; her body was soon shaking with laughter to the extent she got hiccups, which just made her laugh more. "I'm sorry," she choked out between gulping air and laughing. "I needed that so much. After the past hour, you have no idea."

" _Hey!"_ Nico sputtered, his mouth falling open. He flicked Will's ear. "It was _one time. Once._ Gods. How about a little discretion? I can't believe I have sex with you."

Will's eyebrows briefly flicked towards the ceiling. "I know. I can't believe I have sex with you either." He paused. "Especially after that."

"You know, FYI, I never get this kind of crap off dead people and skeletons. The rep I have as the death dude? It's down to everyone here. You're all jerks."

"So, do all the dead people get a chorus or two?" Percy asked, his mouth split into a wide grin. " _The Circle of Death_ , maybe?"

Rachel lost it. She threw her head backwards and let out a laugh from the depths of her body. A tear escaped the corner of her eye; her face reddened as she struggled to get enough air.

Nico narrowed his eyes. "Hey, little orphan Annie, I wouldn't be laughing if I were you."

The laughter stopped instantly, like a balloon had burst. "Nico—" There was a growl of warning to her voice.

"I'm sorry, orphan Annie?" Percy said, looking between the two of them. "Is there... am I missing something here?"

"If you'd kindly divert your eyes for a couple of seconds, you'll miss me planting my foot up Nico's ass and won't have to make any witness statements at my trial," Rachel ground out.

Nico grinned. "You mean, you don't know? Rachel had a starring role in her school's production of _Annie_. I mean, she had the hair for it and everything. You shouldn't be surprised. She'd probably be on Broadway right now and we'd never have met her if it wasn't for her little mishap on opening night."

"They'll never find your body," Rachel said. "My father knows people. And owns an entire cement company. Do the math."

"What happened on opening night?" Percy asked.

" _Nothing_ ," Rachel hissed.

Nico's grin widened. "Our poor little Broadway star in the making was so nervous making her debut that when it came to _It's a Hard Knock Life_ , well, let's just say she forgot all about the letter N."

Will gave a snort of laughter and a sharp inhale all at once. It sent him immediately into a hacking cough and laughter combination which doubled him over on the couch.

Percy blinked for a few seconds and then his mouth slowly opened. "You mean, from knock?"

"Way to catch up," Nico said. "Yes, of course from knock. In front of a whole auditorium."

Rachel leapt up and dived at Nico, swiping at him. "I was _eight_ and I had stage fright! And I told you in _confidence_!"

"You told me while rinsing margaritas out of your hair because you'd got so drunk you forgot to put the top on the blender." Every other word he spoke, Nico had to jump back from Rachel's swinging hands. "You were in no position to make me sign a non-disclosure."

"It was a _drunk confession_ ," Rachel said, as if Nico were particularly slow. "Everyone knows those are as sacred as what happens at actual Confession. Now stop moving so I can strangle you." She backed Nico into a corner, but he vanished into the shadows, leaving her clutching at nothing but tendrils of darkness.

As soon as her fingers touched them she shuddered, images from her dream flashing across her vision. Looking down at her hand, she watched the shadows dribble from the ends of her fingers and inch towards the corner, where they blended with their brethren just as Nico appeared cross-legged in the middle of the dining table. Rachel's stomach churned.

Percy saw her staring at the shadows, saw the blood drain from her flushed face, and stood up. "Guys, I hate to do this to you, but we still need to talk about why we're here."

The smile slid from Nico's face and he inched towards the edge of the table and hopped off, pulling out a chair and settling into it. "Right."

Percy scratched his chin slowly. There were traces of stubble; his nails rasped against it. "I want to try and wait until three months has passed. Just give me three months. I get why you don't want to keep this from Annabeth, but it's not forever. It's only until she's in a safer place with her pregnancy and you never know: we might actually have figured this thing out by then and so it won't have to be such a big thing."

"Three months?" Will said, getting up off the coffee table and slumping into an armchair with his face a mask of conflict. It looked like he was hoping to sink into the cushions and vanish. Finally, he let out a long exhale. "Fine. I can get behind that if I have to. Gods help us all."

"She's going to kill me," Rachel said, shaking her head. "But I guess I can do it. If it will help keep her safe."

"Thanks. Okay, so there's a prophecy. Rachel, do you remember it?" Percy asked.

Rachel's hands disappeared up her sleeves. She seemed to shrink; again she pulled the cardigan taut. Percy's stomach dropped. Rachel had given a lot of prophecies in her years as the Oracle, foreseen and even seen firsthand her share of death and destruction, and she did the job she had to with as brave a face as she could. This prophecy seemed different. What she had seen and heard had scared her, and that scared Percy. If it was bad enough to freak Rachel out, then what did how bad had it been?

He hadn't managed to catch most of what Rachel had said on the phone, if truth be told. He'd been trying to be as stealthy as possible so he didn't wake Annabeth, especially after how mad she had been about him turning up in the early hours after his night out with Nico and Will, that he hadn't done as much listening as he should have done. Even if he'd had the opportunity to sit still and listen he wasn't sure he'd have been able to take it all in.

"It's not something I'm going to forget." Rachel's voice was barely above a whisper; her throat bobbed. The haunted look she'd been wearing when Percy first entered the apartment returned to her face. "I don't care how much of a cliché this is, but if you'd _seen_ it..." She shook her head. "And afterwards… I have to tell you something. And it's bad."

"You mean we're in even deeper shit than just the prophecy?" Nico asked. "Super."

Rachel only nodded.

"Huh." Will grabbed one of the cushions off the armchair and hugged it to his stomach. "Shit."

"I'll remember it," Percy said. "If I have to get it tattooed somewhere, I will. You won't have to say it again after tonight."

Rachel took a deep breath in and let it out through her mouth. "Okay." She cleared her throat. Her tongue suddenly felt like jerky in her mouth.

Nico sat up straighter on the dining room chair. He hadn't heard the prophecy; all he'd been told by Percy was Rachel had received a prophecy and it was an emergency, one which could be about the baby. He hadn't needed to hear anything else. Now, a morbid curiosity overtook him. What the hell had got Percy out of bed at such a crazy time of the morning, had resulted in him calling in reinforcements? All he knew was it couldn't be anything good.

 _"A child will be born in day of night_

 _As Boreas reaches utmost might._

 _This heir to Wisdom, Sea and Sky_

 _Could be the gods' greatest ally."_

Rachel saw Percy visibly relax, tension slipping from his body. Knowing she had to burst his bubble almost set her off crying again. Instead, she swallowed hard and continued, her voice faltering along the way.

 _"Yet when twins collide,_

 _Unleashing Nyx on a noontime ride,_

 _The void will consume all alight_

 _And with this power, grow its might._

 _The pit will stir as dark devours,_

 _An awakening to crush Olympus' towers.  
The child born below darkness deep  
May not get its soul to keep  
For it has the power to be the key  
To unlock the pit's prison and set him free._

 _To secure his rise to conquer all  
The blood of an innocent must fall.  
If blood spills before the twins abate  
The pit will ascend to end all fate."_

The prophecy was met with nothing but silence. The words seem to hang in the air, the way the discordant clang of notes from two fists smashed down on a piano would. Rachel looked to the other occupants in the room but none of them were looking at her; all seemed to be lost in a world of their own, or else transfixed by the prophecy's thundering, runaway train rhythm.

"What, no applause?" She didn't mean it, of course. No one in their right mind would applaud after that. But she had to say something, no matter how weak, because the silence was growing stronger with each breath and she suddenly felt if she didn't say _something_ , no one would ever speak again. No one replied and she took a deep breath in. Might as well get it all out on the table now in case any of them dared to think this was rock bottom. "And… I think that could be the last prophecy for a while. I think I was lucky and it got to me in a dream when it did."

Will frowned. "What do you mean, you were lucky? And the last prophecy for a while? Why? What's going on? Has dad gone missing or something?"

"No, it's not Apollo who's AWOL. It's the Oracle. She's gone."

Percy's head jerked up. "What? Please tell me you mean like, 'gone fishing' or 'gone to the spa."

Rachel chewed her lip and shook her head. Her eyes welled with tears. She began gathering her cardigan around herself again with the accompanying _scrick_ of wool beginning to give. "I wish. I had the dream and then I got attacked. There was this woman, I don't know who she was, but she… she took the Oracle and she vanished. It's not just her. Every scroll in the Library of Prophecies in Delphi has gone blank."

"What woman?" Percy demanded. "We have to find her so we can fix this. The Oracle is a pretty damn important weapon. How hard can it be if she has the Oracle in her? That's not exactly inconspicuous. No offence."

Rachel shook her head. "I don't know who the hell she was. Well, maybe I did. It felt like I should have known her, but I didn't. If that makes any sense. Like someone's face you know you should be able to recall but you can't think where from or why. She looked so familiar but I'm sure I've never seen her before."

"Can you describe her?"

Rachel shrugged. "Gods, Percy, I don't know. It happened so fast. She was tall and thin. White tufty hair. Older. Umm… her stockings were a mess. She had carpet slippers on. She was wearing this filthy apron. It was stained with things even the gods couldn't identify. I don't know how long she'd been wearing it for but that thing was not sanitary even though she'd clearly been cooking in it because all I could smell was like… burnt toast, maybe?"

Nico sat up straighter and exchanged a look with Percy. "Burnt cookies?"

"Maybe?" Rachel said, squinting. "Why, does that sound familiar to you?"

"Shit." Percy got up out of his seat and paced away from everyone and then turned back towards them. "Was there anything else? Anything at all?"

"Okay, you're going to think this is the Xanax talking but actually, yes. She tried to give me this disgusting mouldy sandwich out of her apron pocket. She left it behind when she vanished."

Will's face screwed up. "Ew. _That's_ what that thing was? I stepped over it on the way to find the Xanax. I thought it was going to grow teeth and chew off my leg. I tossed it in the trash. You're telling me that was a clue? No fair. Scooby-Doo's clues were all way more sanitary than that."

Percy bounded across the apartment and vanished into the kitchen. When he came back, he had Rachel's garbage can in his hands. He upended it onto the coffee table.

"Hey!" Rachel rounded the couch quickly and tugged Percy's arm down out of the air. "What are you doing? I made _one_ foray into modern art with that trash sculpture and I didn't do it in my own apartment for a _reason_."

Percy sifted through the assorted trash until he came across a sandwich that was well on its way to growing its own turquoise fur coat. Grimacing, he pinched the least disgusting corner and peeled back the top slice of bread. Underneath was peanut butter and jelly. He closed his eyes. Nico swore under his breath.

"Are you two going to share or are Rachel and I playing the world's worst and possibly most disgusting game of charades over here?" Will asked, flicking his foot to dislodge a discarded candy wrapper.

"I know who took the Oracle's power," Percy said. He let the slice of bread in his hand splat back to the coffee table. "Tell Apollo he needs to look for May Castellan."


	9. May IV

_May_

 _IV_

"Luke's mother?" Rachel gasped. "That was Luke's _mother_? But she looked so _old_."

Percy lowered the garbage can to the floor and began dejectedly tossing trash back into it. He sighed. "She did the last time I saw her. After trying to take on the Oracle before the curse was lifted and then after Luke left her with nothing but these glimpses of visions of what was going to happen to him she was never the same. I didn't even know she was still alive. I never thought to check up on her, you know? I should have looked out for her."

"The woman is rubber room nuts, Percy," Nico said. "What were you going to do, strap her into a straitjacket and hope for the best? What happened to her happened a long time ago. Way before you even knew her or Luke and before everything that happened on Olympus. You can't blame yourself for this. You were sixteen years old the last time you saw her."

"Captain Compassion swoops in to save the day," Rachel muttered and Percy took an even more intimate interest in picking up the trash.

"Bite me. If I'm Captain anyone, I'm Captain Realistic. We have way bigger things to worry about than wallowing about whether or not dropping by on a woman who every time she opens the door to someone her son's age thinks he's come home to her at last before you have to shatter that illusion would have helped at all. She's unhinged and that wouldn't have changed even if you'd been sat in her kitchen every night drinking Kool Aid until you puke red."

The trash can thudded to the floor. Percy gave it a light kick; it rang dully. "Still—"

"Look, Percy, lesson number one. You can't save everyone. And besides, if anyone should be feeling like crap over this, it's me. The entire reason May Castellan is off her rocker is because of what my dad did to the Oracle right in front of me to get back at the gods after Zeus tried to zap Bianca and me off the face of the planet."

Will got up off the chair and pulled out the dining chair next to Nico, spinning it around so he could face him. "Hey, no one blames _you_ for that. You didn't even remember it for seventy years. You are not your father and you are not responsible for what he does any more than I'm responsible for my dad's haikus."

Nico's shrug was one-shouldered and leaden. "If you say so. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Right now, we have bigger fish to fry right now that don't involve beating ourselves up over ancient history. Like the prophecy, for instance."

Will folded his arms across his chest and glared at Nico, but Nico refused to meet his eyes, finding the tabletop fascinating. Will made a vaguely disapproving noise in the back of his throat and got up, shaking his head exasperatedly. "Fine," he said. "Let's talk about the prophecy." His feet began to eat up the floor as he paced across the room. The crease was back between his eyebrows again. "I've been sitting there going over it and the more I think about it, the more I think parts don't make any sense." He looked at Rachel. "Are you sure that's how it went?"

Rachel arched an eyebrow, aiming for irritation, but the weight of the prophecy crushed it back down again. When she spoke again, her voice wasn't angry, just weary. "I told you. It's not something I'll forget. I'll try, but what I saw with it... I'm going to be hearing and seeing those things for a long time."

"Okay, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. But why would Nyx be out in the daytime? How is it even possible? And a day of night? It doesn't make _sense_."

"Well, we know what the part with the pit is referring to," Nico said. The edge in his voice was borne of both bitterness and fear. "I thought I'd get away without having to deal with it ever again. Should have known I wouldn't get so lucky. When do I ever?"

"Tartarus." Percy's mouth vanished into a thin line. He'd forgotten about his hand; it gave him a sharp tug as a reminder when he unconsciously curled it into a fist.

"The prophecy is about him rising? As in actually, full on _rising_?" Will got no answer to his question, only three sets of downcast eyes. He gave a sharp nod and walked back to the first aid kit on the coffee table, opening it again and busying his hands with straightening and arranging the contents.

"Not if I can help it," Nico said. Shadows curled around him, pulsating around his hands. Memories of Tartarus still woke him up at night. "That bastard is staying down under the ground where he belongs if it's the last thing I do."

Rachel crossed the room to a sideboard, which was topped with an array of crystal decanters surrounded by upturned tumblers. She righted four tumblers, selected a decanter and began pouring drinks. "It might be," she murmured over the glugging alcohol. "For all of us. That's what's freaking me out." She pinched two glasses in each hand by the rims and began handing them around the room. Nico tossed his straight back. Percy took a sip.

Will took his own tumbler and pried the fourth one out of Rachel's hand as well before she could take it. "Uh-uh. No booze for you. Xanax and scotch don't mix. Sorry."

Rachel glowered at him. "Well, it's a good job it's bourbon then."

Will kept hold of the glass, staring Rachel down.

"Seriously?"

"Hey, I gave you that pill. If I sit here and watch you drink on top of it I am going to be freaking out all night in case you don't wake up tomorrow."

Rachel's eyes almost rolled out of her head and she slumped back into the armchair. "It was one pill and one drink. Gods. You're such a _doctor_."

"Waste not, want not," Nico said with a shrug, walking over to Will and leaning over to pluck one of the glasses out of his hand. He tossed that back as well. "Cheers," he coughed over the burn of the booze going down.

"Your liver will thank me," Will said. "Nico's… not so much. But we'll have that conversation later." He gave his glass one last once over and then took a sip, ignoring Nico wrinkling his nose at his last comment. Bourbon was far from his drink but, well, when in Rome and any port in a storm and any other metaphor you wanted to spectacularly mix in there.

Rachel snorted and folded her arms across her chest. "Yeah? Well, my brain won't. Tartarus is rising and if I have to face him down with the Oracle AWOL then I think I'm going to need to be trashed."

"At least we know where the Oracle has gone," Will said. "That's a start. I mean, if this is Tartarus, he's the one who got to May Castellan, isn't he? Who else would have the power to make her disappear and suck every prophecy ever spoken down with her? He must be keeping her in Tartarus. The place is the antithesis of sunlight. My dad means nothing down there. Anyway, this is assuming we can't stop him rising. It's not set in stone yet. If we can figure this out, then maybe we can stop him before he even starts. We just need to decode the prophecy."

"Line by line." Nico nodded, holding his glass out to Rachel; Rachel had already retrieved the decanter from the coffee table and was making for Nico's glass.

"Okay," Rachel said, putting the decanter down on the glass-topped coffee table with a heavy clack. _"'A day of night'._ Any ideas?"

"Day is not night," Will said. "Night is not day. I don't even get how that would be possible."

"Come on, I know the sun literally shines out of your dad's ass but daylight isn't all-powerful," protested Nico. "I wouldn't be able to shadow travel otherwise. There are ways around it."

Will scowled and opened his mouth to protest, but Rachel cut him off.

"Okay, before one of you two ends up sleeping on the couch tonight, we'll stick a pin in that one," she said. "Will's right, anyway. It doesn't make sense and there are more important lines to consider. So _When Boreas reaches utmost might_ '… _"_

"Winter," Nico said, with a shrug.

"Annabeth is due in January," Percy tried.

' _When the twins collide'…_ What do you think?"

"My dad and Artemis…?" Will tried, shooting Nico a glare that read Big Trouble Later. "I mean, are there really any other twins that matter enough to be in a prophecy? But perhaps I'm just being biased here."

"I thought it might have been about _Annabeth_ having twins?" Percy suggested, glancing at Rachel.

Rachel sat back to perch on the arm of the chair, her mouth twisted in thought. "No, I don't think so. Sorry, I just don't think that fits with what I Saw when I found out she was pregnant."

"Oh." Percy chewed that over for a while, then looked up at Will. "So, say this is about Apollo and Artemis. Why are they colliding?"

Will gave a tired shrug. He noticed that there was still bandages and gauze all over the table from earlier and methodically began repacking the first aid kit. "Gods know. They're always mad at each other for some stupid thing. If the prophecy referred to them _not_ colliding it would actually be more groundbreaking."

Percy nodded. "True. Them arguing is less of a once in a lifetime world-ending event and more of a… Tuesday. So what about other sets of twins? Romulus and Remus?"

"Seriously? You've been hanging out with Jason too much," Rachel said, her face screwed up. "Way too Roman for this. It mentions Nyx, not Nox."

"Oh yeah," Percy said. "Right."

"Cassandra had a twin brother, didn't she?" Will asked Rachel, frowning. "Both of them could see the future. I'm sure I've heard dad talk about them. What about them?"

Rachel snorted. "Please. What am I, the keeper of Apollo's little black book of who he's gifted with the Sight?"

"Uh… yeah?"

Rachel glared at him but couldn't keep it up. "Okay, fine. You got me. Yes, Cassandra and her twin brother Helenus could both see the future. It's a possibility, but they're both dead. Unless we're looking at another situation like during the Giant War where the Doors of Death get jammed open and people start escaping the Underworld, it's not likely."

"And I'd know about that," Nico said. "It's all quiet down there right now, at least on that front."

"What about Amphion and Zethus?" Will tried. "They're twins by Zeus and the river nymph Antiope. Amphion's wife had major beef with my dad and Aunt Artemis. She had way too many kids and thought that made her better than grandma Leto, who'd only had dad and Artemis. So dad and Artemis kind of… slaughtered her and all her children. Because, you know, they're big into proportionate response and all that."

"Great. Twins fighting twins. Twins squared," Rachel muttered. "As if this wasn't enough of a headache."

Percy glanced at Nico before speaking. "Otis and Ephialtes?" he tried. "If Tartarus is rising, he might bring some giants." There was no reaction from Nico. Percy knew for a fact that Nico was still trying to shake the nightmares spawned by that bronze jar, so he'd been expecting to see some kind of reaction. "Nico?"

Will shook his head. "Percy, don't. Not now."

"When, then? I'm sorry, Will. I know what they did to Nico was awful, but—"

"Nyx!" Nico yelped like he'd been given an electric shock, snapping his fingers rapidly. His eyes traced a path across the floor no one else could see.

Percy frowned. "Whoa. Wait, Nyx has a twin?"

Nico squinted at Percy, his entire face screwed up. "Huh? No. What are you talking about? I mean maybe we're thinking too broad. We have to think in terms of relationship with Nyx. So, what other twins do we know who are a little bit closer to Nyx than Apollo or Artemis or the prophetic wonder twins or… yeah. Otis and Ephialtes." His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard.

"Uh…"

Nico snorted and reached for his drink, taking a sip. "Really? You _met_ Nyx, remember? She has twin sons: Thanatos and Hypnos"

Percy's eyes lit up. "Of course. If we're talking about Nyx then that makes the most sense, right? So, say they get angry with each other, it comes to blows… could that trigger Nyx on a high noon joyride?"

Nico shrugged. "Maybe. If they're fighting near her chariot?"

"They could be fighting it out in the Mansion of the Night and break a vase she loves. You know, one made out of quantum singularities and the ground entrails of her enemies?" Rachel suggested. She paused. "She doesn't seem like much of an interior designer, so I bet it was as tacky as fuck, but she might be attached."

"Or they could break something bigger than that." Percy closed his eyes. He would never forget the sounds of the Mansion of the Night; they haunted both him and Annabeth. They woke him up screaming, whether that was in the dead of night or if he'd dozed off on the sand at the beach. He didn't even know what would have happened if they'd seen any of it. He didn't want to know. "What if somehow they get into a fight and the result if the destruction of the entire mansion? Nyx would be furious, enough to get her chariot out during the day, and add to that whatever the hell she keeps cooped up in there…" He swallowed. "If that ever gets out because the mansion is destroyed, the world is screwed."

"Even without that, just Nyx being out in the day has got to be enough of a slap in the face to natural order to cause a serious imbalance," Rachel said.

"It could be enough for Tartarus to somehow funnel the power of the extinguished lights, the day itself, down into himself so he can rise?" Will tried. "I mean, it's not like he's going to have had this chance may times before."

Rachel's fingers traced the lines etched into the crystal stopper of the decanter on the coffee table. "That fits. When is Tartarus going to have had the chance to use the chaos and the extinguished daylight for his own benefit? Whatever Nyx is going to do, the light will have to go _somewhere_. Where else is it going to go but into the biggest void there is? So he'll use it to send up a monster army. Whatever power this gives him, he's going to use it to free one of the biggest monster armies the world has ever seen." Her voice shrank to almost nothing as she finished speaking, images of Manhattan teeming with monsters under flashes of crimson lightning continuing to sear themselves deeper into her brain.

"Why now, though? So, Nyx gets pissed. Big deal. Why is that going to lead to him pulling something like this?" Nico's forehead puckered and he started pacing the room, shaking his head.

"' _The child born below darkness deep/May not get its soul to keep/For it has the power to be the key/To unlock the pit's prison and set him free'_ ," Percy said. He could barely speak; it came out more of a croak. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Nyx creates the imbalance but he needs more. All Nyx is doing is giving him the power to send up the army. He hasn't had a reason to do it before. Now he has blood to fetch. A soul to reap. So he can use the power in it to rise." He had all but forgotten the drink he held in his hand; now he was suddenly incredibly aware of the glass. His fist had tightened on it to the point of shaking. The blood of an innocent was his child. It had to be.

"We don't know it's your kid, Percy," Nico said, almost as if he'd read Percy's mind. "I mean, don't forget, an heir to Sky? Sounds like Thalia or Jason's territory. You're not a child of Zeus and nor is Annabeth."

Rachel grimaced. "I really don't want to rain on this parade, but Zeus is Annabeth's grandfather and this baby's great-grandfather. It's a direct line. Even on Percy's side, Zeus is the kid's granduncle. Two of the Big Three right there, and three of the thirteen major gods with a direct line to the baby." There were tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry, Percy. I didn't want to have to tell you that. Any of this, in fact. I'm so sorry."

With his throat tightening, Percy didn't think he could manage his bourbon, even if he did acknowledge it might make him feel better. He set the tumbler down on the table harder than he meant to; even so, it made nowhere near the sound he heard, which was the final crash of a gavel at a death sentence.

"It's not your fault," he managed. "I may be freaking out, but not enough to shoot the messenger. At least, not twice in one night."

He looked up at the other three people in the room. They were all staring at him, looking to him to tell them what to do next. That sent a wave of nausea rolling over him because he plain _didn't know_. He was just as clueless as any of them, maybe more because he was paralysed with fear right now. How the hell was he supposed to know what to do, to make any decisions, feeling so utterly useless? He reached for the bourbon after all and downed it in one. It was the only thing he was certain that he wanted to do right now.

"We'll get through this, Percy. We always do," Nico said, just as the silence from Percy began to frighten him. Percy always had an answer, a comeback, and to see him totally without that was worse than any prophecy. "Kick ass, take names, and this will all be over before you know it. We got this."

There were few other people in the world Percy would have believed this from, even under normal circumstances. But these weren't normal circumstances. A primordial being was plotting to kill his child and rise. What was there that he or anyone could say to quell his anxiety, to kill the lingering doubts that nothing anyone could do would ever be enough to keep his family safe?


	10. May V

**_Thanks to everyone who's still with me and reading so far. I know it's a slow burn fic, but we're getting to the place where all hell breaks loose soon. Watch this space._**

 _ **Marz**_

* * *

 _May V_

* * *

It was almost impossible to tell when the sun was about to rise in Manhattan.

The sky never became truly dark after sunset. The city created its own orange halo of light pollution that blotted out the stars. The only indicator was the moon; even though it, too, was rendered frail by the lights of the city that never slept, it was nonetheless a useful herald of the coming day as it began to slip below the horizon.

Rachel was sat on the brick parapet that surrounded the penthouse's terrace, leaning against the wall behind her. The French windows were open, rattling gently against the side the building in a slight breeze. Goosebumps puckered the skin on her arms but she paid no attention.

The city below her was slowly waking up. She could hear the warning beeps of trucks reversing and the rumble of traffic start to intensify, even though night was yet to fully relinquish its hold on the world. Lights began winking in the windows stacked upon windows of the buildings all around her.

She dragged a hand through her hair, twisting it as she did so to try and keep it back out of her face. Still the breeze tugged at it, once again threatening it with escape. There was no way she could have raised the energy to be irritated by it beyond letting out a sigh through her nose. A hole, a wound, gaped inside her. It felt like she was haemorrhaging. In a weird way, she wished she was. Then she could understand this feeling, this emptiness, this _panic_. If she was pressing her hands to a gash and watching her life slick scarlet through her fingers, this feeling would make sense. As it was, there were no outward signs to explain why it felt like someone had clawed an organ right out of her torso.

Inside, though, the she was raw. The place where the Oracle had been echoed cavernously; she had never realised how much she felt the presence until it had been taken from her. There was a compass inside her spinning endlessly, never finding north. A map shredded to confetti frozen into a million tiny blades was being scattered by the winds.

Who was she? Why was she here?

Out of the corner of her eye, a figure emerged from a flash of light that sent shadows skittering like tumbleweed. She turned to face Apollo, cuffing at her face as she did so.

"Hey."

"Hi. Rachel, I don't have long. The sun is almost due up and if I mess that up and lose the Oracle all in one day my dad will tear me to pieces."

"You didn't find anything, did you?" The look on Apollo's face was all the answer she needed. She took a sharp intake of breath and looked away from him out over the city again. Morning wore on. The first honk of that day's billion split the eerie predawn calm.

"I found something. There was a trail of sorts. I think the woman who attacked you—"

"May Castellan," Rachel said to the city.

"You _know_? Is… did the Oracle come back?"

Rachel gave a bitter laugh. "Nope. This was decidedly non-prophetic detective work. A mouldy sandwich was involved. It's a long story. Long night, actually."

"Oh." He paused. "Are you… are you okay?"

Rachel pulled her hands up inside her cardigan. "Am I okay?" She shook her head. "Am I _okay_? Someone broke into my bedroom while I was sleeping and in seconds destroyed _every_ thing. It's all gone. Yesterday, I was the Oracle. Hell, a few _hours_ ago, I was the Oracle. I knew who I was. I knew why I was here. Then in this tiny split second all that gets taken away from me and I'm left with…" Her throat closed, choking off any further words. Despite herself, hot, angry tears burned at her eyes. She ground her teeth and took a deep breath in, looking up to the lightening sky. "Nothing."

Apollo walked over to her and bent to lean on the parapet with his forearms. "You weren't always the Oracle. And no one is the Oracle forever."

"So? I've been the Oracle for almost as long as I wasn't. This has been who I am since I was sixteen years old."

"Before the Oracle, you were Rachel Elizabeth Dare. And that's who you are now. That hasn't changed. The Oracle was always just an added extra. It wasn't who you were. This is going to sound like a line I use on dates because, well, it's a line I use on dates, but I almost never mean it. This time I do. So listen to me. Look at yourself. You are gorgeous. You are kind and smart and one of the most talented artists in your generation, and believe me I know a thing or two about art. You never give up. You tirelessly fight for humanity. You're brave. None of those things have changed. That's all you. None of that was the Oracle."

The corners of Rachel's mouth quirked up into the start of a smile, but it was squashed flat before it could take hold. "I could be Joan of Arc crossed with Monet crossed with Mother Theresa and it wouldn't make any difference. I barely remember myself before the Oracle." She paused, swallowed hard. "And nor does anyone else."

"What does anyone else have to do with it? If they can't see how amazing you are underneath the Oracle then that's their loss."

"Is it? Do you want me to count how many friends I had before I was the Oracle? How many people accepted me for being a great artist and kind and smart and whatever the hell else you said I was? Because I can count them, and it won't need a calculator. Before I met Percy and everyone else, before I came to Camp… there was hardly anyone."

Apollo frowned. "No one? There must have been some people."

Rachel sighed. "Some, sure. At my stupid fancy schools there were a couple of people who really got me and were like me, but mostly I didn't fit in with all the rich kids. Anyone who was old money looked down on me because my father had the audacity to work for a living and not just inherit a pile of cash. Plus, they hated that he had more money than all of them put together even if he didn't have the family tree and dorms named after him in the Ivy League. And then even among people who were there because their money was new, it still wasn't easy. I felt like I was speaking a foreign language sometimes. The way people would look at me, it was like I was always committing this huge crime and I never found out what that was."

"I'm sorry. I had no idea."

"It's not your fault. And why would you know? Why would anyone know? People just seem to think having money makes your life so easy but that's bullshit. It's this curse. It's this huge wall made of bullion between you and everyone else. I couldn't find anyone to connect with at school, so I drifted through. I spent all my time on community projects and other charitable stuff trying to make friends there by pretending I was just this normal person who liked donating their time to charity. But then I always ended up getting too involved and asking my father to make a donation, which meant I had to leave because I couldn't take lying to people's faces when they got all excited about this sudden cash.

"Do you know how hard it is to finally find some people you click with and who get you and who you really like and then spend all your time with them living a lie? How could I be friends with them when I couldn't tell them I had a trust fund, even if I didn't want it or ask for? How would they look at me knowing I could write a cheque and buy all of their homes with change to spare?" Her eyes welled up again and she scraped her sleeves across her face, leaving angry splotches in their wake.

"If they couldn't see you for who you really were and love you anyway then they sound seriously dumb and not worth getting upset over." Apollo was looking perplexed now, like he was trying to follow an individual running stitch across an entire tapestry.

Rachel shook her head. "They weren't dumb. Don't say that. That's not fair. They were just normal people living normal lives and they had so much that I wanted and couldn't have because of some accident in biology that gave me my parents and their money. And maybe they would have accepted me if I gave them the chance but I never felt like I _could_ give them the chance. I was always scared to out myself to them in case they turned their backs on me."

"That was a long time ago, Rachel. Now you have plenty of friends. You have this huge network of people who see you for who you are. Like it should be."

She could see that he still didn't get it and let out a frustrated sigh, shaking her head. "They all came into my life pretty much at the same time as the Oracle. My whole relationship with them is based on me vomiting green mist at them from time to time. Now it's just me and I am _empty_ inside. I can't see the future. I can't give prophecies. What use am I to them? Why are they doing to bother with me without the Oracle?

"I've got Percy who can control the freaking oceans and Nico who can raise the dead and Will who can nail a bullseye with an arrow from a mile away while treating a million battle wounds and a hundred other demigods who are all part of this huge, complicated and amazing world. A world that doesn't include me anymore. I'm back to being sixteen and this friendless mess who doesn't fit in anywhere and never will. What am I supposed to do? Start over? Where? _How_?" Her voice cracked and she put a hand over her mouth, stifling a sob.

Apollo pushed himself off the brick parapet and walked over to her, pulling him towards him into a hug. Rachel blinked at the sudden contact. The shock of it dried her eyes immediately. She wasn't sure Apollo had ever hugged her. Come to think of it, gods weren't big on giving out hugs to their own children, let alone random hangers-on. Still, she eventually felt herself melt into it, resting her head on his chest.

"I would tell you that you are smart and gorgeous and kind again but apparently you went deaf to all sense when you went blind. So instead… Rachel, I might not be very good at the whole relationships thing. And I don't know how it works between humans. But to me, I don't think you're giving anyone enough credit here. You're not giving yourself enough credit by thinking you can't be amazing without the Oracle, which is crap because you _are_ amazing. Oracle or not. And you're not giving your friends enough credit, either. They're not going to ditch you. I've seen the way you all are together. That's not something that's going to evaporate just because you aren't the Oracle anymore."

Eventually, Rachel nodded. "You're right. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to have a meltdown. I just… I feel like I don't know who I am suddenly. I don't know how to make it better."

"You'll figure it out. Whether the Oracle comes back to you or not, you are Rachel Elizabeth Dare and that is something special in its own right. Don't forget that." He broke away from her and glanced over at the pinkening horizon. He shifted from foot to foot and walked away from her, looking out at the lightening sky. His fingers twitched.

Rachel followed his gaze. "Go. I don't want your dad to tear you a new one because of me."

"Not until I know you're going to be okay."

"Thank you. But I will be. Just promise me you'll keep looking for the Oracle?"

Apollo's shoulder slumped. "I will, I promise, but the trail has gone cold for now. Wherever May is, I can't find her. That means she's somewhere totally out of my domain. Somewhere sunlight can't penetrate."

"Like the Underworld?"

A halo of fire burst to life around Apollo's head. Rachel jumped and scrambled off the parapet as an unbearable wave of heat leapt from nowhere out of his body and bowled over her. His eyes were glowing like two mini suns; just a fleeting glance had left her seeing spots.

"Hades? You think my uncle messed with the Oracle again?" His voice was a guttural growl. His billboard-worthy features were contorted into the ugliest of snarls.

"Whoa, hey, calm down," Rachel said, walking slowly towards him, palms outstretched but with her eyes firmly planted on the black slate of the terrace. It seemed to be the only surface that was capable of absorbing the supernova Apollo was throwing out; all other surfaces were glaring it back at her like a rotisserie oven. "I didn't mean that at all. Hades would never pull that again. Besides, what's his motive? Last time, he did it because Zeus had just killed the woman he loved and none of the gods respected him enough to give him a throne on Olympus. What has happened that's even close to two of those things?"

The flames around Apollo died to an angry crackle of sparks. "True. But why mention the Underworld, then?"

Rachel licked her lips. Apollo didn't know the prophecy had got to her in a dream before May stole the Oracle, so he didn't know what it said. Percy had made them promise not to tell anyone, but this wasn't just anyone. It was the freaking god of prophecy. What was she supposed to do? "Well…" she said slowly. "There's not just Hades down there, is there? You know as well as I do that there are things down there that even Hades has no control over. I mean—"

Apollo's head gave a nervous jerk. It looked like he was straining to hear something. "Okay, gods, I am _coming_." He looked at Rachel; the sparks around his head poofed into nothingness. "I'm sorry, I have to go. You'd think Helios would do this one favour for me after all this time but he's still bitter that the mortals slowly conflated me with him and he got worshipped less. I can't help it if I'm just better than him. Better looking, better at driving the sun chariot, but whatever. If I'm not there in ten seconds, he's going to my dad. He's always been such a sneak. And Titans wonder why we don't like them? I'll keep looking for the Oracle. Take care."

He vanished so quickly and the light burned so bright that Rachel felt her skin prickle. It would have done under factor 50. All that was left of where Apollo had been standing were wisps of smoke coiling from the charred slate of the terrace, which had fractured from the heat.

Orange exploded in the eastern sky, usurping the pink. Rachel drew her cardigan around herself and leaned against the wall, watching the day break.

She wondered how many more times she'd get to watch the sun rise. If Tartarus did rise and trigger the apocalypse, then the number of mornings left for her and everyone else on the planet to see was exactly the same.


	11. May VI

_May VI_

* * *

The owl was in its element, perfectly suited to gliding silently through the trees at night. Not a feather whispered or rustled as it navigated through branches half a breath away from bursting into full leaf. White feathers glowed in the moonlight, rippling with every wingbeat.

A seagull flapped hard behind the owl. More suited to arcing over wide open ocean and unaccustomed to having to dodge obstacles in such close quarters, it was struggling to keep up through the forest.

The owl let out a screech. Its wings folded against its body and it dived into a clearing, talons outstretched. Silver light flared, briefly skeletonising the trees. The seagull dived too, like it had spotted an unguarded sandwich, and salt spray plumed over the compacted dirt and leaf mulch below. The birds were gone, replaced by Athena and Poseidon.

"I assume this is not a social call?" Athena opened, folding her pale arms over her chest. Her eyes glinted like storm clouds through the clearing despite the lack of light, as did her bronze breastplate.

"Were you trying to kill me, niece? Flying like that through the trees… Madness." Poseidon was breathing hard, struggling to compose himself.

"Kill you? Please. Ridiculous. Did you ask for this meeting just to exchange melodramatic impossibilities? I have better things to spend my time on. You called me here. Besides, don't tell me you couldn't keep up. A Big Three god lagging behind little old me?"

Poseidon drew himself up to his full height. "I never said that, Athena. Just that less of a white knuckle ride would have been appreciated."

Athena snorted. "There's no shame in coming second, uncle. After all these years, you would think it would come naturally to you."

"Must you throw the patronage of Athens in my face each time we meet?" Poseidon's voice was a growl and his eyes flared. "It does you no favours to continue to preen over past victories. Especially not today, when we need to be united."

Athena's eyes narrowed and her head tilted. "Oh? And what does that mean?"

"Annabeth has told you by now that she is expecting a child?"

"Yes, she told me this morning." Athena's eyes flicked over Poseidon before widening. "Is that why you're here? Is something wrong with Annabeth or the baby?"

"No. Right now, they are both well as far as I am aware."

Athena's shoulders sagged down her back, returning length to her elegant neck. "Good. Then I remain happy for her. Even if the paternity issue is less than I would have desired."

Poseidon gave a cold, humourless laugh, shaking his head. "Oh Athena. You still think your daughter can do better than my son? The day will come very soon when you will have to eat those words and my only regret is that none of us may be around to see it. My son will be an excellent father and you will be grateful to have him as a son-in-law."

Athena looked Poseidon up and down. Her eyes narrowed further, searching beneath a furrowed forehead. Eventually, she unfolded her arms. "You are serious." It wasn't a question, a mere statement of what she had gleaned. Her chin rose as she regarded Poseidon, clearly unsettled. "Then you had better start at the beginning, uncle, and leave nothing out. If I am to be grateful that Percy Jackson married my daughter, then you are telling me the world is about to end. Once again. This is not something that can wait."

By the time Poseidon finished telling the story, Athena had deflated like a punctured balloon. She paced away from him across the clearing. "Tartarus," she said, her mouth a taut line. "You're sure?"

"It is what the Oracle has foretold."

Athena nodded, but her face was still contorted into a frown. "But Annabeth said nothing of this to me. I don't understand why she wouldn't come to me with this herself. Why all this subterfuge?"

Poseidon drew in a sharp breath. "Annabeth… doesn't know."

" _What_?" The single syllable cut like a razor across the clearing. Athena's form shimmered like a heat mirage, her skin blazing like burning magnesium. "Explain."

"Percy has decided to keep this from her until her condition is more stable." The dirt beneath Athena's sandals began to smoke, so Poseidon hastily amended his statement. "Against my advice, might I add. But it is what it is. There is no use getting angry about this. He is trying to protect her the only way he knows how. Athena, though it is not your domain you have seen mortal women in childbearing and childbirth over millennia. You know how fragile things are when a new life is being created. In Annabeth's case, it has been more difficult still to even get to this point. You know that. From what Percy tells me, they had all but given up hope of ever conceiving. Now that they have, he doesn't want to risk that."

The borderline radioactive haze around Athena began to dwindle. "That may be so, but whatever you say, Annabeth is strong. She deserves to know."

"And she will. Percy has promised to tell her after the first three months have passed. Apparently, things are safer after that."

"Fine." Her skin winked back to cool porcelain. The bark on the trees behind her was black, cracked and hissing, glowing orange as sap sizzled forth. "But if he doesn't, then I will tell her myself and he will have both of us to answer to. If Annabeth allows him to come away from telling her in one piece, he will not be so fortunate with me."

"It won't come to that."

A shadow passed across Athena's face and she looked skyward. "No," she said, folding her arms once again as if against a sudden chill, "perhaps it won't."

"If you're thinking of your father, then don't. Tonight he is still distracted by the missing Oracle. He doesn't have to know we're even having this conversation."

Athena scoffed. "You can't be serious. You have just told me that Tartarus is going to claw his way out of the pit and you're suggesting we keep this quiet? Have you lost your mind? What will happen when he finds out? No. This makes no sense. How can we prepare for what is coming unless we are all united? What tactics can we form with just the two of us? The other gods need to know what is coming if we have any hope of defeating Tartarus."

"Athena, your own birth should be reminder enough of how your father reacts when he is threatened by the unborn! I was there when he turned your mother into a fly and swallowed her alive. Tell me, what do you think he'll do to your daughter once he finds out she's pregnant with a child that could bring down all Olympus?"

"That was different."

"How? How is him being told that Metis might bear him a son who will unseat him any different from telling him that Annabeth is carrying a child that could unleash Tartarus, topple Olympus and end the world? In fact, this is much worse! It's the end of the world, not just the end of his rule. You and your mother could survive being swallowed alive. Annabeth is mortal. Do you think he'll let her live, or the pregnancy continue, knowing all of this? And what of Hera? You know how she dislikes Annabeth, and childbearing and childbirth _is_ her domain. She would not need much persuading from your father to take drastic action."

A shadow slipped over Athena's face. "But suppose we explain to them? Make it clear?"

Poseidon snorted. "It would come down to a vote, and who would we get on our side at this point? Your father and Hera are definitely out. Hephaestus is hardly the romantic, sentimental sort and he tends to vote with his mother, anyway. Not that I blame him. If my mother had drop-kicked me off a mountain, I'd try and keep on her good side as well.

"I can't see Ares doing anything for my son's future happiness. Hades is impossible to read in these situations. Artemis will probably just think Annabeth should have joined the Hunt and become celibate, so she won't have any qualms about going against us. Apollo might not be able to disentangle this from the missing Oracle to vote with a clear head. We might win over Aphrodite and Demeter, but I cannot be certain of anyone but you and I. Two voices out of the entire council. Until we have a solution that proves we can win against Tartarus, Annabeth is in grave danger. Especially from your father. You know that as well as I do."

Athena swallowed, looking down at the floor, but then she nodded like her head suddenly weighed a thousand pounds. "You're right. We need a solution before we present him with the problem. For everyone's sake." Her voice was heavy.

"Yes. Which is why I have come to you. I can't do this alone, and you have specific talents that will ease the process. Strategy. Tactics. Insight. It's time we put aside the past and formed a new alliance. We have a grandchild, Athena. Whatever has gone between us over the millennia, if this can't bring us together, then we are truly lost."

Athena looked up. "If you'd told me yesterday I would find something to agree with you on, uncle, I would never have believed it. But for once, we're on the same page. Of course we must join together. Here's to a new alliance. Long may it last."


	12. June I

_June_ _I_

* * *

Percy found Annabeth at the dressing table in their bedroom. There was a mirror on top of it leaning against the wall; with hardly any room between the bed and the dressing table, certainly not enough for a stool or a chair, you had to perch on the end of the bed to see in it. That was where Annabeth sat, back like a ramrod, each vertebra so meticulously aligned and with so much tension Percy was sure if he plucked her spinal cord right now, it would sing like a harp string.

She was brushing her hair. It had been tamed way past a shimmer and now tangles of it clogged the bristles, but still she kept brushing like a robot. Her eyes were fixed beyond the reflection, way past the mirror's glass and probably through the wooden back. It looked like she was seeing for miles.

"If you keep that up you're going to have a receding hairline before I do, and how depressing would that be?"

Nothing.

"You know we have to leave soon, right? It's nearly time for the appointment."

The brush rasped.

"Earth to Annabeth. Annabeth, are you reading me? Over." Percy gave a stylised burst of static at the end of the sentence, but when Annabeth blinked slowly and turned to face him he wished he hadn't. Pale and drawn, dark circles bloomed under her eyes. The smile fell off his face.

"Hey, what's the matter? Morning sickness? I know you haven't had it yet, but we've still got the ginger root my mom dropped off. I think I remember how to make the tea she showed me. She said it was the only thing she found to stop her puking her guts out _Exorcist_ style with me. Apparently, I was a pain in the ass from the beginning. Who'd have thought it, huh?"

Annabeth shook her head. Unfettered hair swished into her face. Normally when that happened it annoyed her and sent her banging around the apartment for one of her ever-vanishing bevy of hair ties — this time, all it provoked was a mechanical tuck behind her ear.

"What is it then?"

"Why did they schedule a scan for me at eight weeks?" It was a blurted statement, out there before Annabeth could consider it or stop it, but she had been asking herself it over and over and she couldn't keep it in anymore.

"Well, I'm not an expert but I think sonograms are kind of part and parcel of this whole pregnancy thing. I mean, don't quote me here but I'm pretty sure there's a couple of these and then at the end there's some pushing."

Annabeth sighed and turned back to her reflection. She shook her head again. For Percy, the fact she hadn't lobbed her hairbrush — on which she retained her death grip — at him for being so purposefully glib about labour hurt more than being beaned with the brush ever could have. "It's _early_ ," she said. "All the books and everyone and everything on the Internet say you have your first scan at twelve weeks at the earliest. Some mothers don't have a scan until eighteen weeks and I'm barely _eight_. In fact, I was still seven weeks two days ago. All I did was go to the doctor's office to get the blood tests and confirm that I'm pregnant so I could get the insurance paperwork underway and suddenly they're booking me in for an early scan? Doesn't that seem odd to you?"

Percy shrugged. The onslaught of questions and information had stunned him. He didn't have any answers. He wished he did, but he didn't. "I don't know. Maybe? I guess? But they know what they're doing, Annabeth. I hear you have to go to college for at least, like two months before they let you loose on patients. They're all over this."

"Fine, but then why aren't they giving all women scans at eight weeks? I'll tell you why. They don't because other women don't have my _issues._ They want to check the baby's managing to hang on in there, basically. I mean, I get it. I do. The doctor explained how difficult it might be for me to get pregnant and carry to term and so they don't want to wait to get eyes on the baby, but..."

Percy frowned and leaned against the doorjamb. "But what? Surely that's a good thing. They'll check to see if it's okay and we get a sneak preview a month before any other parents usually get one. What's not to like?"

Annabeth's free hand grazed her stomach, rubbing in tentative circles. The mirror drew her gaze again and the motion of her hand seemed to mesmerise her. "But everything. This is only because my womb is a freaking rocky and inhospitable place, for a start. And what's not to like? Gods. Do you really want me to answer that, Percy? So _much_." She put the brush down at last, very deliberately. It clacked against the wooden dressing table. The hand on her stomach curled into a fist; her nails bit into her palm.

Percy crossed the room and sat down next to her on the bed, dragging her into his chest. "Come here. Everything is going to be fine today. You'll see."

"How can you be so sure? How can you sit there and tell me that? What if they do the scan and find nothing? What then? I could have had so many early miscarriages in the past because my uterus is so damn hostile to life and I wouldn't even have known it. And even if I am still pregnant, with the scarring I have an elevated chance it's an ectopic pregnancy because the egg hasn't made it all the way down the fallopian tube.

"I only have one fallopian tube that works as it is, Percy. Do you know what the treatment can be for an ectopic pregnancy? Sometimes, they have to take away the entire tube. That would be it for us." Her voice thickened in her throat. She couldn't speak anymore. Her straight spine collapsed into a curve.

"I thought we said we weren't going to look at WebMD? It's just a world of badness right there. Nothing good is going to come out of it."

"That doesn't mean it's wrong, does it? Just because what I read makes me freak out doesn't mean it's wrong. We can't pretend like it's all going to be sunshine and kittens."

Percy grabbed her hand; it was trembling with the effort of holding itself in a fist. "Annabeth. Hey. Why would Rachel see you having a baby if you weren't going to have one?"

"So? That doesn't _mean_ anything. The future could change. You know that." Her voice broke. Tears shivered at the edge of her eyes.

Percy brushed his lips against her hair, then rested his chin on the top of her head and closed his eyes. "Don't think like that," he said as she sniffled. "Nothing bad is going to happen to this baby."

 _At least, not yet,_ he added grimly in his head. Guilt stabbed him in the gut. He wished he could tell Annabeth why he was so sure. He knew this scan was going to turn out okay because this baby was probably going be the key to Tartarus rising and killing them all, but he couldn't do it to her. Not until they had something solid to go on which would mean it wouldn't be as hard on her as it had been on him. Not until her pregnancy was at a less risky stage.

Annabeth gave a long exhale. It ruffled Percy's shirt; where it was moistened with tears, the breath made it extra cool in patches. She snuggled closer to him for a few seconds then nodded, straightening up to compose herself. Dabbing under her eyes with her fingers, she gave a final sniff and began the process of winding her hair up into a low bun.

As she slid pins into her hair, she laughed. "Oh gods. I'm such a mess. I'm sorry. I know this isn't me. I just... when it comes to this baby, I keep feeling like I failed before I'm even out of the gate, you know? Everything I do feels like I'm screwing up or about to screw up. When it's just me, I'll take whatever gets thrown at me. Now... it's different. I can't explain it. I barely feel like the same person anymore."

It felt like everything Annabeth was saying was aimed squarely at twisting a knife in his chest. Percy knew she wasn't, because how could she be, and it wasn't her fault, but everything she said sent a new tide of guilt washing through his veins. If she thought _she_ was screwing up then where did that leave him, the guy who couldn't find a way to protect his unborn child and fend off an apocalypse? The guy who was sitting here telling her it was all going to be okay when he knew otherwise?

"Yeah," Percy said. His mouth was dry. He still hadn't let go of Annabeth's hand; he pressed both his hand and hers into her stomach. "It is different: it's _better_. There's three of us now. And you haven't failed; come on, you could never fail. Give me one example of when you have? It's not in your DNA."

Annabeth smiled. "I hope you're right. I really do. And sorry. I feel so stupid sitting here bawling my eyes out. Hey, at least I'm more confident I'm still pregnant now. Normal me would not go to pieces so easily. I'm pinning this one on hormones. Otherwise, this is embarrassing."

Percy held up his hands. "Hormones are a good sign. We want lots and lots of hormones, please. Whatever they make you do. Let them roll. I can take them. Now come on. It's starting to rain and we'll never get a cab."

"A cab? What's wrong with the subway?"

"Uh, it's a filthy cesspit and every surface you can touch falls into two camps: crusty or sticky. No way I'm letting you ride it pregnant."

Annabeth quirked an eyebrow. "Percy, women have been pregnant for millennia. Before Lysol was invented. Before they even knew what germs _were_. I don't need cotton wool and I don't need bubblewrap. If anything, getting on the subway will be _good_ for my immune system." She stood and smoothed her top, glancing down at Percy when he made no move to get up off the bed. "Don't argue with me, or I'll kick your ass and blame that on hormones as well."

Percy tried to stare her down but lost the standoff and heaved a huge, begrudging shrug. "Fine. But don't expect me to like it. The first sneeze out of you while we're down there and I'm pulling the emergency brake and kicking a window out to get you above ground. Don't argue with _me_ on that."

Annabeth squinted at him. "Oh gods. You're not even kidding, are you?"

"Uh, is Zeus a serial womaniser? Of course I'm not kidding."

"Okay, so although I am going to need you to help me through wobbles like my mini meltdown a second ago, just so you know there is only so much of this kind of thing woman can take." She gestured in a vague circle at Percy with one hand. "This doesn't work for me. If you're going to be like this for the next seven months I am sending you to live with your mother until I go into labour. Otherwise, you're going to smother me. Or I might smother you. With a pillow. While you're sleeping. They won't even notice what I've done because you leave so much drool on the pillowcases while you sleep anyway."

"How is this smothering? You made a huge thing about not being able to eat sushi and are you seriously telling me there are more bacteria in a California roll than on one of those subway handles? Because I do not buy that and I will go and find you a black light this second to prove it _."_

"You do not make it easy for me to love you, you know that, right? So when I kill you and weight your body, would you like to be dumped in the Hudson or the East River? Or do you want it to be a surprise?"

Percy grinned. "I'm not here to make it easy. You have to love me warts and all. That's the _point_. And I have _lots_ of warts." He paused. "Not actual warts. That would be gross. I mean, like, inner warts."

Annabeth stared at him until her eyes couldn't take it anymore; they sagged closed as she pinched the bridge of her nose. "I married a total dork. I am in love with the world's biggest dork. Where did I go wrong?"

"Hey, I just love you. Both of you." It was true. He did. But that didn't stop the words feeling like ashes in his mouth. Every time he'd said them to her since he had started keeping her in the dark about the prophecy they'd left a bitter taste on his tongue even as they thudded, hollow and empty, to the ground. He kept waiting for Annabeth to pick up on it — in fact, he might even be relieved if she did — but so far she hadn't noticed.

His stomach squirmed. He was still keeping this huge secret from her and you didn't do that to people you loved. Yet here he was, lying through his teeth at her. He kept trying to tell himself that it was all for the greater good, that it was for the best, but he hated himself all the same. What if Will had been right all along when he said it was wrong to keep it from her?

"Come on," Annabeth said. "Let's go meet our baby."

Even though he knew he should feel excited, the churning of guilt just left him numb. He hated himself for that most of all. Percy smiled and nodded, hoping it would disguise the bottom falling out of his world.

All the women in the waiting area looked _really_ pregnant. Well, perhaps that was unfair. They were far from the stage where you took one look at them and started frantically boiling water and fetching towels, just in case, but when Annabeth compared them to her, they looked _huge_.

Most had already made the switch to maternity clothes, some loose and floaty, others had gone for the stretched-tight, flaunt it look. Annabeth was still wearing her own jeans; the only thing vaguely uncomfortable on her right now was her bra, from which her out-of-control boobs seemed to be permanently plotting an escape.

Annabeth was sat on her hands, staring at the beige walls. Someone had tried to make them look less nondescript by plastering them with colourful posters of smiling pregnant women, invariably in fields for some obscure reason; babies and diagrams of pregnancy also featured. It was a vain effort. Even if the walls didn't give it away, everything else did.

The institutional, cushioned chairs around the edge of the room, the squat coffee tables with aged pregnancy magazines fanned out, the strategically-placed boxes of tissues and bottles of hand sanitiser, the plastic model of a woman almost at term with her stomach lifted off so you could see the baby was engaged, the low purr of phones on the switchboard at reception, all of it came together to mark the room for what it was: a doctor's office.

Maybe she was being paranoid, but she was sure she could see the other pregnant women in the room waiting for their appointments giving her the once-over, wondering what she was doing there when she looked so spectacularly without child. She felt like a fraud. That only added to the lead weights in her stomach, the ones some psychopath had apparently tied to the butterflies in residence since this morning, dragging them down to flutter limply and heavily in the very pit of her abdomen. When she swallowed, her throat was half-closed with nerves.

Her watch said her appointment should have been almost ten minutes ago. Seconds ticked eternally by. Her legs were crossed and her foot was jiggling up and down, sending vibrations throughout her whole leg.

"Maybe we should go," Annabeth said, turning to Percy. "I mean, they're running late. We could be waiting forever. Plus…" She dropped her voice, took another furtive glance around the room. "Plus, look around. These women are all way more pregnant than me. They should get the appointment, right?"

Percy reached out and placed a hand on Annabeth's ankle, stopping it bopping. He gave it a reassuring squeeze. "I thought we went over this? You're here for a reason. That's no more or less important than anyone else here just because no one would give up their seat for you on the subway yet, the bastards, which is another reason we should have taken a cab, FYI. Besides, doctors run late all the time. This is not a sign you shouldn't be here. Relax, okay? Everything will be fine."

 _Hypocrite_ , his brain hissed at him.

"I'll have another scan at twelve weeks or so, though. That's only four weeks away. Maybe we should wait until then? Maybe they've made a mistake booking me in. We could be wasting their time. Or maybe—"

Percy turned in his chair so he was facing her more. Her eyes were darting around the room, lingering on the door. Hair had come loose; he tucked it behind her ear for her, leaving his hand resting on the side of her face. "Hey. Stick with me, okay? You look like you're about to leave a cartoon Annabeth silhouette in the wall. What happened? You were gung-ho back in the bedroom." He paused. "Wait, that sounds filthy. But you know what I mean."

Annabeth took a deep inhale and let it out again. She nodded slowly. "You're right. Panicking isn't going to do any good. I've just got to go in there and get this over with."

"Don't sound too excited. You're only talking about meeting our baby for the first time."

"There's no guarantee I'm... you know," Annabeth said. "You're assuming things go our way."

Percy wanted to tell Annabeth. He wanted to tell her so badly that he knew everything would be okay with the baby, but he'd have to explain to her _how_ he knew, and he couldn't. Not yet. "I was thinking on the subway," he said instead. He was trying to give her the confidence he had because of the prophecy but in a roundabout way. "Even if things don't go our way today, and I'm pretty sure they're going to, then even with what you said in the bedroom... we have other options, you know. This isn't the end of the line for us."

Annabeth's entire face sagged. "I've already thought the same thing, but it won't work. You're talking about in vitro fertilisation? They probably won't implant into my uterus anyway, not given it's apparently like a car wreck in there. We'd have to find a surrogate. And besides, Percy, what is a lab going to do with your sperm and my eggs? Put them under a microscope. What if they discover we only have, like, half the amount of human DNA we should have somehow, even though I still don't understand exactly how that works, or if they find any other traces of my mom or your dad?

"They're going to send in Navy SEALS and the CIA and NASA and the FBI and a whole bunch of other shady organisations known just by acronyms and then we're going to be chained up in a government lab and vivisected. We can't risk blowing Olympus' secret, one our entire world has been keeping for millennia, because we want a baby. That would be selfish. Even if the result is that we end up stashed for live experimentation in the secret cavern under Mount Rushmore."

"Wait, there's a secret government lab hidden under Mount Rushmore?"

" _That's_ what you took from that? Seriously? And no, of course they spent 14 years between World Wars at a massively geopolitically sensitive moment and even after the Wall Street Crash plunged the economy into chaos and seriously slashed funding scaling and carving a sheer granite rock face purely for _decoration_. It absolutely was not to disguise what they were building underneath it. Why else would they do it? I just wish I could see it. You know, without having to be chained to some table while they cut me open."

Percy blinked. "Huh."

"Oh, you sweet summer child," Annabeth said, her mouth quirking into a half-smile. "That really never occurred to you, huh?"

"No... But hey, this is what I keep you around."

Annabeth's eyebrows vanished into her hairline. "Excuse me?"

"Well, and because you're beautiful. Obviously."

Annabeth's eyebrows had now migrated to the degree that they were practically on the back of her head.

"But not, like, on the outside. In the brain, where it counts?" Percy tried. "Wait. And on the outside. Of course. You're amazing? I love you?"

"Annabeth Chase?" A woman dressed in scrubs and carrying a clipboard had appeared at the door to the waiting area.

Annabeth gave a wry smile. "You realise your life is a series of people stepping in at just the right time to save your ass, right? If it's not ultrasound technicians it's amnesiac Titans and their sabre-tooth tigers."

They stood and followed the smiling technician out of the room and down a corridor. The technician walked a few paces ahead of them.

"And yet none of those things make me as lucky as I felt the day I married you."

Annabeth punched Percy in the upper arm. Her eyes rolled, but her lips curved into a smile. "Better but ugh, vomit. Just because I haven't had morning sickness yet doesn't mean it's not going to be triggered suddenly if you keep saying things like that. I guess it's good we're in a place with plenty of puke receptacles because keep talking that way and you might get to revisit my breakfast."

The ultrasound technician led them into a room and closed the door behind them. The smile fell off Annabeth's face when she saw the vinyl couch, already pre-covered with paper, and the ultrasound machine standing next to it. She swallowed hard. Percy noticed and slipped his hand into hers.

"My name is Alicia and I'll be doing your scan today," the technician said. She flipped through her clipboard, her eyes scanning down the pages of notes. "I see you're here for an eight week scan. If you'd like to pop yourself up on the couch, I just need to ask a couple of questions before we start." Alicia patted the couch in a way that was probably supposed to be inviting, but each pat echoed through Annabeth's brain like a gunshot. Her mouth dried.

"It's okay, it may look like the chair you sit in at the dentist but I'm not going to be doing any root canals," Alicia said. She smiled encouragingly. "Not my area of expertise. Babies and birth I can handle. Teeth and mouths I find gross. It's weird how these things work out, huh?"

Annabeth nodded. She wasn't sure she could speak. Her feet shuffled towards the couch almost on autopilot. It loomed in her vision. She suddenly wished she could face the entire Titan family instead of having to lie on that couch. Having the scan meant facing the very real possibility they wouldn't find anything at all and she wasn't sure she could do that.

"Don't stress," Alicia said, putting the clipboard down next to the ultrasound machine and locking eyes with Annabeth. "I've looked at your notes and I understand you're probably nervous, but I'm sure everything is fine. We just want to take a routine peek at the baby, that's all." She looked over to Percy. "Are you the father?"

"Yes."

"Excellent. Daddy, help her up onto the couch and then you can take a seat right there. Take your time." She turned away and began busying herself by the sink, washing her hands and then straightening a litany of medical supplies surrounding it.

Percy still hadn't let go of Annabeth's hand and he raised it to his lips for a kiss. "Come on. You'll be fine."

"Everyone keeps saying that," Annabeth said. Her voice was small, but there was a bitter edge to it. "Everyone keeps telling me I'll be fine but they don't _know_. How can they?"

"Only one way to find out, though, huh?"

Annabeth's legs felt like lead and her neck like it had turned to wood; it gave her nod a mechanical air as she dragged herself towards the couch, eventually sitting on it. She wasn't sure how she managed to swing her legs up. They felt so heavy she would have thought it impossible but she managed it all the same.

"I'm right here," Percy said, taking her hand and kissing it.

Alicia turned from the sink. "Perfect. Now, I'm sorry but I need to ask these questions. Have you had any spotting since you saw your doctor last? Any cramping or stomach pain, particularly sharp and one-sided?"

Annabeth shook her head.

"Good. How about nausea or vomiting?"

Again Annabeth shook her head.

"Not at all? Not even once?"

"No. Why? Is that bad?" Annabeth managed to say.

Alicia picked up the clipboard and made some notes. "No, of course not. It just makes you really lucky, that's all. Not many women get through the first trimester without developing an intimate relationship with their toilet bowl." She stopped writing and put the clipboard down. "Great. Okay. Now, we're going to start off with what we call a transabdominal ultrasound. That's the glamorous one Hollywood uses for dramatic effect. If we don't manage to catch anything on this one, don't freak out on me, okay? You're still early in your pregnancy and all of your hormone levels still look good, so if we can't see anything all we need to do is look at doing a transvaginal ultrasound where we take a look from the inside. They don't do that one in the media much because it doesn't make for such great TV, but it's a routine procedure, I promise. Anyway, we'll try the transabdominal one first because it's more comfortable and see how we get on. If you could unbutton your pants for me and lift up your shirt, we'll get started."

Annabeth's fingers fumbled with the buttons on her jeans. Eventually she managed to get them undone and slid them down, pulling up her shirt. She stared at her stomach, her fingers clenching on the rolls of her shirt.

"Gel now," Alicia said, picking up a bottle from next to the ultrasound. "Hopefully it won't be too cold." She squirted some onto Annabeth's stomach and rubbed it across the surface. Her fingers bumped over old white ridges, gnarls of scar tissue left behind from battles past, but she made no comment. Wiping her hands, Alicia switched on the ultrasound machine and picked up the wand. She stared at the screen as she slid the wand over Annabeth's stomach.

The following silence gaped for eternity. Annabeth continued to stare down at her stomach. It seemed to expand to vast proportions in front of her, yawning away from her sight with a glistening of gel. Her fingers dug tighter into her shirt; her knuckles whitened.

Finally, the wand stopped roving and Alicia smiled. "Congratulations," she said, turning the ultrasound screen around to face them.

"Congratulations?" Annabeth blinked, sucking in a shocked breath. "It's okay?"

Alicia nodded. "As far as it being right where we want it, in your uterus, not the fallopian tube, I'm pretty sure, yes. I'll need the doctor to confirm but as far as I can tell, it's looking like we'd expect it to at this stage."

Annabeth's ears began to ring. Alicia's voice faded to a tinny drone. A single tear bubbled from one eye and zipped down her cheek. It startled her and she pressed her hand to her face, feeling the dampness between her fingers.

"It's okay?" Annabeth croaked again.

"Absolutely," Alicia said. She pointed to the screen in front of her where a small white blob was fluttering. "You see this here? A perfect heartbeat. We're looking at around 150 beats per minute right now, which is perfectly within range for someone early in their eighth week."

"It's okay," Annabeth repeated. Her fingers loosened on her shirt. It sagged back down towards her stomach and began to soak up the gel coating her skin. She didn't notice. Another tear escaped, this time from her other eye. "Percy, look. It's okay. We're having a baby."

She turned to Percy, but he wasn't looking at her. He was staring at the screen, fixated on the pulsating of the heartbeat. His own eyes were shining, his mouth slightly open. Though he had never been so happy, his stomach dropped. Sitting here staring at his baby's heartbeat, he suddenly realised he'd made a terrible mistake, the biggest one he'd ever made in his life. Oh gods...

"Annabeth," he said, reaching for her hand and squeezing it. She squeezed back. He swallowed hard. His voice turned to a croak. "We have to talk."


	13. June II

_June_

 _II_

"Percy, I swear to the gods if you don't stop following me I will not be responsible for my actions." Annabeth banged open the door to the apartment and stalked through. She tried to slam it closed behind her but Percy stuck his foot in it. The door juddered off his shoe. Annabeth spun around and snarled as Percy edged his way into the apartment. "I mean it. I don't want to even look at you right now."

Percy closed the door behind him.

"Seriously? You're closing the door? Don't bother. I'm not standing in the same room as you after what you've done so if you're staying, I'm gone."

"I get it, I'm sorry." Percy pressed his back against the door, blocking Annabeth from making a hasty exit so he could have chance to talk.

" _Sorry_? That's the weak shit you're giving me? That you're _sorry_? Get out of my way, Percy, or I will make you. I am not going to stand here listening to you trying to make excuses."

"I know you're mad okay but let me _explain_."

Annabeth's face contorted into a mask of rage. "Oh, you know I'm mad, do you? Don't you dare try to sweep this under the rug by pretending to acknowledge my feelings now. You _lied_ to me. You lied to me over and over again about so many different things. You _knew_ the baby would be okay and you let me worry sick over it when all you had to do to stop me was to tell the truth. How dare you? How the hell do you even begin to justify that? You sat there telling me everything would be fine while I was freaking out, all this time knowing—"

"Uh, is this a bad time?"

Annabeth whirled to face the voice. The couch cushions were still dented and rising from where Rachel had been sat; she had got to her feet when she heard the shouting. Nico was sat on the counter in the kitchen, holding a star-shaped helium balloon in one hand.

" _You_ ," Annabeth hissed at Rachel. "What the hell do you think you're doing here?"

Rachel blinked. Her mouth opened and closed a few times; her throat bobbed convulsively. "Percy texted me. Told me to come over?" she tried, her voice quavering. "I brought Nico because he's better than a skeleton key for getting through locked doors." She paused. "I can't say that the pun was totally unintentional there. Sorry."

"What? No. I didn't tell you to come over," Percy said, stuffing his hand in his pocket and rooting around for his phone.

Rachel beat him to hers. "Sure you did," she said, flipping through it and then waving it at him screen first. "This is from you, see? 'Come on over 30 mins'. I assumed you guys had had good news from the scan, so..."

Percy crossed the apartment, rounded the couch and grabbed the phone from her. As he squinted at it, his shoulders sagged. "Shit. Sorry. Autocorrect. I was running after Annabeth. Not exactly a recipe for accurate texting. That was supposed to say 'Coming over 30 mins'. As in, I was coming over to you in half an hour. Now's not really a great time."

"We kind of figured that out for ourselves," Nico muttered, his eyes sliding between Percy and Annabeth. "What's going on?"

Annabeth ignored him. "Percy, what are you talking about? Now is the _perfect_ time for Rachel to be here. She can explain what the hell she was thinking when she had a prophecy about my baby in my damn womb and didn't feel the need to tell me about it. She can tell me what kind of friend keeps that to herself."

Rachel's mouth opened and closed a few times as the full force of Annabeth's anger turned back on her. She dropped her gaze to her feet and stared down at them, shame flooding her body. Her eyes prickled with tears.

Nico slid off the counter and walked into the middle of the room, cursing the balloon that trailed after him. How the hell were you supposed to look remotely serious clutching one? Equally, he didn't think now was the time to unleash a novelty balloon to bob against the ceiling, so what else was he supposed to do? He stopped next to Rachel. "Whoa. Hey now. Don't get mad at Rachel. It's not like that. Look, we're sorry, okay? But—"

 _"_ We? _We_?!" Annabeth demanded, her voice lowering into a growl. She was shaking her head in sharp, jerking motions of incredulity, eyes boring into Percy like she was trying to boil his brain right of his skull. "You told _Nico_ about this before you told me? Are you kidding me?"

Closing his eyes and rubbing a hand down his face as his body almost seemed to collapse in on itself, Percy sighed. "I needed help. I needed advice. I couldn't do it by myself, okay? If this was something I could fix by myself I would have done it. And it would be done already. But I can't, and that terrifies me. Don't get mad at them. I made everyone promise not to tell you. They all wanted to. They all told me you needed to know but I thought… I thought I could fix it first. That you wouldn't have to go through what I did."

"'Everyone'? 'They'?" Annabeth's voice was low, silky and dangerous. The syllables vibrated with anger. "Are you even aware how deep that hole is you keep digging for yourself? Who else knows? Who else did you share this with before you thought it was necessary to share it with me, your wife, and the one with the baby inside her?"

"Does it matter? You know now."

"I need to know who else I have to kill," Annabeth said. "So yeah, it does matter to me. A lot, actually."

"I told you: get mad at me. I'm the one that made them all promise not to tell you. I should have listened to them when they said you deserved to know. I get that now. I was just trying to protect you."

"You mean like you protected me this morning when I was crying because I might have had a miscarriage or an ectopic pregnancy and you knew everything would be fine and just kept lying? You're right. I feel so _protected._ Great job, Percy. Really. Now tell me. Who. Else. Knows?"

Percy averted his eyes, staring at the floor just to the left of Annabeth's feet. "Will," he said eventually.

Annabeth shot a glare at Nico. "Of course. Anyone else?"

"Is this really going to help?" Percy asked.

"I swear to the gods, Percy—"

"Fine. I told a couple of other people."

"Who?"

"Well… I needed Malcolm to get the best of the Great Library on Olympus. I needed Reyna to keep on top of everything going on at Camp Jupiter and with the Roman side of things. I told Jason and Hazel because even though I had Nico on board, I wanted to get as much firepower as possible behind this. I think Jason told Piper. Hazel said if I was going to force her to keep this from you, she wasn't going to keep it from Frank as well. I told Leo and he pretty much cleared his entire workshop for us. Weirdly, I think the idea of the biggest monster army the world has ever seen excited him because he gets to build stuff to try and repel it. Clarisse still trains kids in fighting at Camp, so she's there all the time. I wondered if maybe she could find something in the Big House that would help. Plus, if you're going to war, you need Clarisse. Lou Ellen is looking into magical texts and protective wards for us."

"I see." Annabeth's nostrils flared around the deep breath she took; her jaw chomped up and down on her tongue. "All those people. You told all those people about this and just left me in the dark? When were you going to tell me, huh? Were you just going to wait until I gave birth and Tartarus was knocking on the door to the labour ward demanding our child? 'Oh, by the way, Annabeth, Tartarus is here for our firstborn, hope that's cool'?"

"As soon as you got into the second trimester I was going to tell you. I didn't want to tell you before that. Not during the riskiest part of your pregnancy. How was I supposed to forgive myself if I told you and the shock of it made you lose the baby? Just because Rachel had Seen the birth didn't mean it couldn't change. Plus, you know, I thought three months would be enough to fix this. You've been through enough. I didn't want to make it worse. I thought if I could fix this by myself then it would be better. But when I saw that heartbeat today… I realised what I was doing was wrong. That I should have told you from the start. I realised that we were having this baby together and we should deal with this together. I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking clearly before."

Annabeth continued to grind her teeth; her jaw began to ache and it felt like she'd soon be spitting out enamel dust. Eventually she managed to swallow the ball of anger pulsing in her chest and sighed, massaging her temples with her fingers. "Fine. Good. I'm glad you realise what you did was unacceptable because it seriously wasn't your call to make. Thank you for thinking about me and trying to make things okay but this whole thing was not up to you. You're just lucky we have a huge crisis on your hands so I don't have time to murder you."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"You're damn right you are. We deal with things together. That's what is supposed to happen. You can't take my choices away from me just because I'm pregnant. I keep telling you: I'm not made of glass. I'm not going to miscarry at the slightest piece of bad news. I mean sure, the risk is still high but whatever you tell me isn't going to cause it. Kind of not how this whole thing works. I'm not some Victorian lady who needs a fan and a fainting couch."

"I know."

"Do you? You keep saying you know, but you don't act like it. If you really knew how I was feeling, you'd have told me in the first place. Plus, you told me Tartarus was planning to rise and steal our baby in some filthy subway car. I mean, really?"

Percy smiled. "See? I told you the subway was filthy."

Annabeth narrowed her eyes at him. "Don't think you're out of the woods yet and can make funny little quips like that. That's not the point and you know it."

Percy held up his hands. "Fine. Okay, sorry. But I was going to take you to a coffee shop so you'd at least be sitting down but, well… you wouldn't let it go."

"That does sound like you," Nico said, tilting his head as he considered this and then nodding in affirmation.

Annabeth's eyes flashed. She barrelled across the apartment towards Nico, fishing her knife out of her purse as she did so. Shoving Nico so hard he went sprawling over the arm of an armchair, she snatched the helium balloon out of his pin-wheeling arms. She yanked it out of the air vanquished it with a single stab. It banged to silvery shreds, most of which were pinned to the arm of the chair inches from Nico's face.

Nico turned his head and gulped at the quivering knife. "See, I told you a helium balloon was a stupid idea," he said to Rachel, his voice partly muffled by his own knee.

Annabeth gaped, wrenching her knife out of the arm of the couch with a screech of protesting wood. "Are you kidding me with this? Did you all take the same class in spectacularly missing the point?"

Nico righted himself on the chair and held up his hands. "Okay, fine. Too early for jokes. Sorry. And really, about this whole thing… it sucks that it got so messed up. We didn't handle it well."

"Don't apologise." Percy was shaking his head and his voice was firm. "This isn't your fault. Everything everyone did to hide this from you, Annabeth, is on me. I made them all keep this from you, despite what they were all screaming at me. They shouldn't have to apologise because I screwed up so spectacularly."

Annabeth looked around the room at the three of them, her face blank. Then she moved over to the window and looked out, her arms folded and fingers tight on her biceps. The earlier rain had cleared up but not without leaving streaks and drops on the glass. Now, a tentative glimmer of sunshine that was trying to emerge as the clouds pushed west fractured in the beaded water into rainbow globules, pebble dashing her face with colour. It warmed her skin and made her squint. She concentrated on her breathing, forcing it to slow to a more meditative pace.

Traffic surged below on glistening asphalt. It snagged at an intersection guarded by traffic lights; she watched the lights cycle, subconsciously making a note of how many times they turned green. Somewhere in the building, someone was vacuuming; she could hear the distant rumble above her.

When she turned around, everyone was staring at her. They hadn't said a word since she'd walked over to the window. "I could talk about how you covering this up is unforgiveable, but I think I've made my feelings on that pretty clear. Besides, I don't have time. I know now and so I need to do something about it. Talk me through the prophecy and what you've got in place so far. I want to know everything."

Percy felt Rachel and Nico's gaze slide onto him without having to look at them. He nodded. "Everything on the table, right now. Got it. But Annabeth… it's not pretty."

"I didn't ask if it was pretty," Annabeth said, crossing the room to sit on the couch. Her back was ramrod straight again, like it had been this morning, but instead of the dead-eyed expression in front of the mirror her eyes were more like the clouds of a gathering storm. "I need to know. I _deserve_ to know. I don't care if it's as ugly as the head of Medusa herself, give it to me straight right now or so help me gods…" She let the threat linger unsaid. No one doubted her intentions.

Percy held up his hands in weary defence. "I'm not trying to get out of telling you. I'm just saying… it doesn't look good for us. And not only that, but we've not found any way around it so far, and we've been looking for weeks."

"All the more reason to tell me then. Spit it out."

Percy sighed, his lips narrowing into a thin line as his gaze fell to the floor. Annabeth tried unsuccessfully to get him to look at her before turning to Nico, but he was finding something on the coffee table absolutely fascinating. Her jaw tightening, Annabeth's eyes swept to Rachel, who was still stood up, almost as if she'd been frozen in place on the spot Annabeth had attacked her earlier.

"Fine. Might as well start the beginning. What did the prophecy say, Rachel?" Annabeth asked.

She saw a shudder ripple down Rachel's body. The redhead's hands tightened into fists, the knuckles glowing white. Eventually, her movements so jerky Annabeth almost looked for strings to check she hadn't become a marionette, Rachel began gathering up shreds of helium balloon from the ground into a methodical pile.

"Rachel—" Heat was rising in Annabeth's voice, but Percy stepped forward.

"Don't," he said. "I promised her she wouldn't have to repeat it again after that night."

Annabeth looked at Percy and blinked, then back at Rachel, whose hands were shaking. Annabeth's spine lost its rigidity and she seemed to shrink down into the couch. Her heart began worming its way up out of her chest and into her throat. She could feel it thudding there, and wondered if that was what was making it suddenly so hard to swallow. "Oh."

"I memorised it," Percy said.

Annabeth's sceptical eyebrows creased together. "You memorised a prophecy? You couldn't even memorise the state capitals in high school."

Percy didn't smile. "No one would forget this."

When Annabeth clasped her hands in her lap, she found her palms had become clammy. She surreptitiously tried to wipe them on her jeans. "Oh," she said again, the weight on her chest doubling. "Okay. Then hit me."

It took a couple of deep breaths to gear himself up for it, but eventually Percy made it through the prophecy in one go. It was exactly the same as Rachel had delivered it that night, the same words, the same thundering rhythm.

The same silence that had fallen back in Rachel's penthouse greeted its last line.

By the end of the prophecy, Annabeth had shifted to sit on her hands to try and quench the desire to wring them. She had never been a handwringer before and she had no intention of starting, but if she were going to start there wouldn't ever be a better time.

"So Tartarus is coming for us," Annabeth said eventually. Her mouth was dry. She had no idea how her tongue had the moisture left to shape sounds. "When day becomes night. I guess it left out the rivers running with blood and the earthquakes and plagues and the rain of fire and brimstone and the lions lying with lambs for brevity. Probably for the best. It was terrifying enough without it. At least whoever wrote it knows when to draw the line to prevent overkill."

"How can you laugh at this?" Percy demanded. "Annabeth, Tartarus is going to rise and kill our child to do it, and you're sat there making jokes?"

Annabeth surged to her feet. Her teeth were bared. "Don't you _dare_ tell me how I should and shouldn't react to this, Percy Jackson. You didn't even give me the _chance_ to react to it until ten minutes ago and you've known for weeks. And what the hell else am I meant to do, huh? Do you want me to scream and cry and pull my hair out? Just fall to pieces? Because I can do that. Part of me would be quite happy rocking in a corner right now with clumps of hair in my fists but that is not going to _help._ That is not going to fix things and dammit, this is going to be fixed if it's the last thing I do. I am not going to let this happen to our baby and I'm sorry if you don't approve of the way I'm choosing to cope with this right now but quite frankly you can suck it because this is all I've got. So, are we going to fight over this or are you going to tell me what you've got so far?"

The air in the apartment crackled. The pieces of helium balloon crinkled into a ball in Rachel's fist.

Percy dropped his gaze first. "You're right. I'm sorry. It's just when you've been going over this and coming up with nothing over and over for all this time… it's not exactly a trip to Disneyland, you know?"

"Well, some of us haven't had the luxury of stewing on this for weeks," Annabeth reminded him stonily. "So how about you get me up to speed?"

Percy flinched at that, but nodded. "We think the twins could be Hypnos and Thanatos. They're the closest set of twins to Nyx, anyway. We thought maybe if they were pissed at each other and it ended in a fight at the home of mommy dearest in the Mansion of the Night, well…"

"The place could go boom and whatever she's keeping cooped up in there could be unleashed on Earth," Annabeth finished, massaging her temples. "Gods. Well, I guess we don't need to put a pin in those plagues. We could still get them after all. That makes sense. But what about other sets of twins? I mean, after the scan today I guess we know it's not _us_ having twins, but Hypnos and Thanatos don't strike me as particularly big on the sibling rivalry front. If you want animosity between twins, you'd be better off looking at Apollo and Artemis."

"Will's looking into it," Nico said. "But he already pointed out that them fighting is hardly unusual. If Tartarus rose every time they fell out then, well, I'm not sure we'd even be having this conversation due to us being dead a trillion times over. It's still a possibility, yeah, but probably not a strong one."

"Good point. Anyone else stick out in the research?"

"I'm looking at Cassandra and Helenus," Rachel said. "They were twins who both had the Sight, and the last line of the prophecy is about ending all fate. But it's tricky."

Lines furrowed across Annabeth's forehead. "Why? I thought Apollo kept a record of every prophecy every spoken?"

"Well yeah, he does. Or he did. In amongst the endless volumes of atrocious haikus. But—" Rachel's eyes widened. "Oh, crap. You really don't know anything. Right."

"Yeah, if this is you trying to get back into my good books it is not working for me. What else don't I know?"

"The Oracle… she's sitting this one out," Percy supplied for Rachel, who was back to looking like she'd been skewered on Annabeth's stare like a kebab.

Annabeth gave a sharp intake of breath. Her face remained mostly entirely composed, but her lips dragged in at the edges, betraying her. She reached out for the magazines on the table and fanned them out before stacking them back up again. "Right. Super." She banged the bottom of the stack down onto the table to straighten up the pile and then put them back down with savage grace. "Well, what happened? And this was going to come out when, exactly?"

"At some point," Percy said. "There's just… lots of stuff going on right now."

"The Oracle going missing is not 'stuff'," Annabeth bit out. "What. Happened?"

"We think Tartarus sent May Castellan to steal her and keep her imprisoned in the Underworld so we'd be going into this blind," Rachel said. She rushed to continue as rage began to strobe through Annabeth's eyes. "But I'm working on it, I promise. We'll get her back. It's just making the research into Cassandra and Helenus tricky because when the Oracle disappeared, Apollo's Delphic library was wiped."

Annabeth stalked away from the middle of the room and towards the apartment door, trying to count to ten in her head. If she'd stayed anywhere near the coffee table, she was sure she'd have flipped it and their furniture took enough of a battering from monster attacks without having to face wanton destruction in the face of her own wrath.

When she turned around, her nails were dug into her palms but she managed to keep her voice even. "Okay. Right. Fine. If there anything else anyone wants to tell me? Is there an undetonated nuclear device under the couch? I assume Atlas isn't about to let the sky fall on us?"

"Well, in the spirit of full disclosure… You know that green asymmetrical top you have? The off the shoulder thing with the one little capped sleeve? Yeah, that needs to go to Goodwill. It makes you look forty."

Rachel and Percy turned to Nico with their eyes bugging out of their heads. Nico shrugged at them.

"What?" he said. "She wants to get all the bad news out on the table and despite that shirt being fugly, she apparently has a serious attachment to it. Someone had to tell her."

Annabeth pumped her fingers open and closed at her sides. If she kept them balled for more than a second, she was going to charge across the room and thump Nico and that wouldn't help. Well. Not in the long-term. "Any other bad news apart from that related to my wardrobe from the guy who still dresses like a teenage emo?" Her voice was strained, subject to random hikes in pitch as she fought to keep it even.

Nico opened his mouth to reply but Rachel reached over and flicked his ear, making him yelp into silence.

"I think you're up to speed now," Percy said.

Annabeth nodded and felt her shoulders slide down her back. "Okay. So, despite the Oracle being missing, has this lead on Helenus and Cassandra got you anywhere?"

Rachel shook her head. "No. Apart from the fact that there is no one more qualified to say 'I told you so' than Cassandra. To be honest, if I were her I'd have a special told you so dance to bust out. Probably something with the running man. I don't know why. It just seems to fit."

"Keep looking. You never know what might be useful. What about Malcolm? Has he found anything in the scrolls at the library?"

"Nada," Percy said. "He's been keeping me updated with all the stuff he's been looking at but to be honest, all I hear is that he hasn't found anything. I don't listen beyond that. There's no point."

Annabeth chewed on her lip. Her eyes swept back and forth across the rug, trying in vain to find a tiny pinprick of light of a lead that hadn't yet been extinguished. Every time she suggested something, it had been covered and was either not useful or hadn't turned up anything yet. "What about my mom and your dad? What have they said about all of this? They must know something, right?"

Percy winced. "Yeah, about that…"

"You haven't _told_ them? Their grandchild is going to be ritually slaughtered to end the world and you've kept them out of the loop? The all-powerful immortals? Seriously? That's even dumber than keeping me in the dark."

"It's not that simple. I went to my dad for help and he said he'd do what he could, but he pretty much shut me down in case Zeus finds out before we've got a solution. He wants to help and your mom probably does too, but they can't without it getting back to Zeus that our baby could end the world. He's not got such a great track record in this area, has he? I mean, look what he did to your grandma Metis when he found out she might be having a son more powerful than him? And what about Thalia? You were _there_ when he turned her into a tree. And sure, she was dying, but he could have just healed her. What was the bigger reason behind it? Because he didn't want her to turn sixteen and become the child of a prophecy that could dethrone the gods and end the freaking world. If I go to them with this, telling them that you're carrying the key to the destruction of Olympus and the apocalypse, how do you think that conversation is going to go? Especially if Zeus gets wind of it. I bet you'll _wish_ you could be a tree."

Realisation seeped across Annabeth's face like spilled red wine through a white linen table cloth. "Shit." She walked back to the couch and sank into it, rubbing her eyes.

"I know. So, sorry. I don't want to go to them and tell them we can't fix this unless I have to."

Annabeth stopped rubbing her eyes; when she looked back up at Percy, they looked red. "We're going to have to say something about this eventually." She gestured down at her stomach. "Give it a few weeks and I'm not exactly going to be able to pass this off as a Krispy Kreme binge, you know? This isn't going to stay a secret forever. Zeus' wife is the freaking goddess of childbirth. It's going to come up that I'm pregnant and then how long will it take before the whole thing unravels?"

"I know," Percy said. "But we're trying to keep it quiet as long as possible. Hera _is_ the goddess of pregnancy and childbirth. You're never exactly in her good books and one wrong look from her if they find out about this before we've got a solution…"

Annabeth pressed her hand into her stomach and nodded, dropping her gaze to the floor. The carpet began to fracture and wobble as tears pricked at her eyes. "She would, wouldn't she?" she asked quietly.

Percy sat down next to her and pulled her into his chest. "She can fucking try," he growled, kissing her head. "If I have to take another dip in the Styx to keep her from hurting you or the baby, I will. But it won't come to that. My dad and your mom care. Both of them. They both watch over us. But distance from this might actually be the best way they can help right now. This way, when the shit hits the fan and Zeus starts throwing thunderbolts and asking questions, in that order, pleading ignorance works in their favour and maybe in ours. They'll help if we really need them. I know they will. But they're probably going to have to go to the rest of the gods to do it and that will make it harder for them. I just think, until then… we're on our own."


	14. June III

_June_

 _III_

Percy crept through the darkened bedroom, balancing a cardboard tray with two takeout caps and a paper bag already translucent with grease on the nightstand as he made his way to the window. Annabeth was curled up asleep, lying on her side. Her blonde hair was tangled around her face and slopped onto the surrounding pillow; the eye makeup she had been wearing yesterday had gathered in clumps and smudges around the lower rim of her eye sockets. Her face was crisscrossed with red pillow creases; yellow rocks of rheum nestled in the corners of her eyes.

She looked stunning.

Percy opened the curtains; light sliced through the gloom, falling on Annabeth's face. Her eyes twitched a couple of times and she frowned, reaching up to rub sleep from her face. She glanced over at the alarm clock and sat bolt upright, tossing the covers off her so hard most of them slid onto the floor.

"Percy, please tell me that clock is wrong and it's not 11 in the morning."

Percy straightened the curtains. "Do… you want me to lie?"

Annabeth growled and began charging around the room, yanking her robe off a hook on the back of the door and whirling it around herself before opening the closet and pulling items of clothing off hangers, strewing them across the rumpled bed. She grabbed a can of dry shampoo off the dresser and plopped down on the end of the bed to spray it through her hair while looking in the dressing table mirror.

"My alarm didn't go off. I'm supposed to be at _work_. Why the hell didn't you wake me up?"

Percy leaned back against the windowsill. "I, uh… I turned it off. You didn't sleep well last night. When you finally got to sleep, you would have been up in like three hours. That's not enough."

Annabeth accidentally frosted her forehead with dry shampoo as she jerked her head towards Percy. White flakes fluttered in front of her vision like falling snow. "You did _what_? Why would you do that? I've functioned on less sleep perfectly well in the past. And anyway, of course I didn't sleep well last night, but whose fault is that? I'd just been told Kronos was coming for my baby and I was the last person to know about it. What do you _expect_?" She swiped the blob of dry shampoo off her face and set about scrubbing it through her hair.

"Don't get mad. You need your rest and I wanted us to talk."

If there hadn't been a large, jawed hair clip in her mouth that second, Percy knew he would have been eviscerated by Annabeth's response. As it was, he felt the heat from the glare she shot at him as she finished putting her hair up in a ponytail and then started winding it up so she could clip it in place.

"You don't get to decide whether I get mad or not. Especially after yesterday. And you don't get to turn my alarm off so we can talk. The world doesn't revolve around what you want and need. This is my _career_ , Percy. I can't just drop it because you feel bad about what you did."

"I called your office and told them you were puking your guts up with morning sickness. Your assistant bumped your morning meetings and moved the rest of your schedule around for you. It's fine."

Annabeth had been peeling the sticker off the top of a pack of makeup wipes when Percy told her the news; her hands spasmed and she ripped too hard, tearing through the entire packet. It cleaved into two halves. Wipes splatted onto the vanity table. " _What?"_

"I called your office and—"

"I heard what you damn well said, Percy. I'm not deaf. I meant what the hell do you think you're doing and, while I'm thinking about it, where the hell do you get off doing something like that? I don't have morning sickness. I'm _fine_. Do you know how many women there are in my firm at my level? Three. And you know how many men there are? In fact, _I_ don't even know how many men there are. Too many to damn count. You know the reason? Because when people are hiring, they took one look at the résumé of a woman of reproductive age and think no, we can't risk hiring her, she'll just go and get pregnant the second she gets good and that will be more trouble than it's worth. You just played right into their hands!"

Percy blinked. "But… what?"

Annabeth's elbows thumped onto the dressing table and she buried her face in her hands, using her fingers to massage her hairline. "Never mind. Forget it. Of course you wouldn't know anything about it. Everything comes so easy to you."

"Excuse me?" Percy demanded, shoving himself forward off the windowsill. "You think my life is _easy_? You've known me since we were eleven. When has my life ever been _easy_? If it wasn't Medusa it was the Hydra or the Nemean lion and an automaton that killed someone I promised Nico I would protect. Then do you even want to talk about the Titans, or the Giants, or _anything_ else in my life and then tell me you think it's easy? And _none_ of that compares to how hard it was for me to watch you pull yourself to pieces because you couldn't get pregnant in the first place. I would have done all of that again that afternoon you told me if I thought it would have changed things."

Annabeth's spine and demeanour softened. She dropped her hands from her face. "You're right. Sorry, I didn't mean your life had been a cakewalk. I just meant that things still come so much easier for guys in so many cases and half the time, they don't even know how good they've got it. I was talking about jobs and careers, not… the rest of it. But it's still why you don't call my office and tell them I'm too sick through pregnancy to come to work. It just reinforces the stereotype, okay?"

Percy nodded. "Fine, okay. I screwed up. Again. I was just trying to look out for you. And you're right: I do feel guilty for what I did. I was trying to help make it better." He paused. "I bought cronuts. And coffee."

Annabeth glanced at the offering on the nightstand. "I'm off caffeine. You know that."

"It's decaf."

Annabeth's lip curled. "Are you kidding me? You know how I feel about decaf."

Percy smiled and crossed the room, popping the lid off the top of one of the takeaway cups to waft the steam towards her. "And yeah, while I'm totally on the same page with that and non-alcoholic beer, it still smells good though, huh? Just this once?"

The smell worked its way into Annabeth's nostrils and she crumbled, reluctantly rising from the bed and moving towards Percy. "Fine," she said, her lower lip jutting as she said it. "I guess as I didn't buy it, I'm not supporting coffee companies' delusions that this is a remotely acceptable invention." She took a sip of coffee and stared at Percy. "Well? I'm still waiting for the promised cronut over here."

Percy jumped like he'd been shocked and scrabbled for the bag, unrolling the top and offering it to Annabeth. She took the bag from him and sat down on the bed, pressing the cup of coffee between her knees and starting to flake pastry off the first of two in the bag.

"What?" she said, as Percy looked slightly crestfallen. "You didn't think you were going to get one of these, did you, after what you did?"

The corners of Percy's mouth dropped and he sighed, shaking his head. "That's a valid point."

"Yes," Annabeth said through a mouth full of pastry, pausing to flick a crumb from the corner of her mouth, "it is."

The bed creaked as Percy sat down next to Annabeth. He reached for his own coffee and she took another sip of hers before starting to demolish the rest of the first cronut.

"You don't know how sorry I am." Percy pressed his hands against the walls of the cup; the scalding liquid within was burning through the paper, stinging his palms. Coffee sloshed underneath the little mouth in the plastic lid. He risked a look up at Annabeth as she sighed and plonked the paper bag off her lap and onto the bed on the other side of her to Percy.

"I do know how sorry you are. I can tell. I'm not completely heartless you know. But Percy, being sorry isn't enough. You systematically lied to me about something that is so important that I can't even fathom why you thought it was a good idea in the first place. You stopped me _trusting_ you. If I can't trust you, where does that leave us?"

"I get it. I really screwed up. But don't I get any credit for doing it for a really good reason? When Rachel told me the prophecy and we found out that Tartarus had already started the assault by sending someone for the Oracle, I was terrified. Paralysed. And then after that, I put my fist through Rachel's wall, for the gods' sake. All I wanted to do was keep you safe."

"Ignorant is not the same as safe."

"Maybe not. But I wanted to make sure you didn't suffer the same way I did. Make sure you didn't have any stress that could affect the baby. Make sure you weren't terrified every damn day. And… I spent a long time feeling really guilty. I wanted to protect you from that." The burning between his palms became too much and he put the coffee down on the nightstand. His palms were glowing like the element inside a toaster.

"Yeah, guilt is what happens when you do something wrong like keeping giant secrets from your wife."

Percy shook his head. "No, not that. Well, yes. That. I did feel guilty for that. I still do, and it's killing me. But before that, all I could think was what have I done? If I'd only been a mortal, or even if I was only the child of someone other than Poseidon, this wouldn't be happening. I couldn't be happy that you were pregnant and I was going to be a dad because all I could think about was how we'd done something that was going to end the world. This isn't the Titans or the Giants. This is something I did that's going to bring about the apocalypse. Something I wanted for so long and then when it finally happened, I didn't even get to feel happy for five minutes before it all came crashing down. You were so happy to be pregnant and so excited to be a mom. Who am I to take that away from you just because it had been taken away from me? It feels like there's just this trail of destruction following me around, and everything I touch ends up in a world of hurt and pain and suffering and loss. If that's the case, fine. I can deal. But why should you and my baby have to suffer because of that? I couldn't make you feel as guilty as I did. It wouldn't have been fair." He swallowed hard.

"Take this," Annabeth said, thrusting her coffee at him.

Percy blinked at her and took it.

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "Put it down. Don't just sit there holding it like the village idiot."

The cup squeaked next to his into the cardboard holder on the nightstand.

Annabeth pulled her legs up onto the bed, curling them underneath her and then gathering Percy's hands into his. "Look at me," she said, shaking Percy's hands when he at first refused to meet her gaze. "Hey. Look at me. This is _not_ your fault. It's not your fault, it's not my fault, and it's certainly not the baby's fault. The only _thing_ that's at fault here is Tartarus. He wants to rise and he wants to use our baby to do it. We're the victims here and we're not going to blame ourselves and feel guilty for it. We're not going to let this stop us being happy. In fact, we're not going to let this stop us doing anything. It is what it is. We'll kick ass, we'll move on. Just like we always do. Okay?"

"But—"

"No. I refuse for there to be a but. There are no buts. I'm sorry you had to feel this way, and thank you for trying to protect me from that, but that's not how I feel right now. Why should I? I love you, okay? But you've had to save the world too many times. You've got too used to everything coming down to you, whether it's the prophecy that happened when you turned sixteen or all the other times you've had to stop the world ending. But not everything that happens is your fault or your responsibility to fix alone. Sometimes, things just happen. And they suck, but we're here to deal with these things together and we'll be fine."

"Will we? This whole thing scares me to death, Annabeth. I can't lose you. Either of you."

"And you think you have the monopoly on terror? Because this just in: you don't. Not even close. I'm terrified as well. But I know we'll fix it. We have to."

Percy raised their hands to his lips and kissed them. "I love you."

"I love you too," Annabeth said, squeezing Percy's hands before disentangling them and picking up the paper bag again. She pulled out what remained of the first cronut and bit into it, sending flakes of pastry fluttering down onto her lap.

"So… if you love me…?" Percy tried.

Annabeth frowned, tightening her grip on the neck of the bag. "Can you have the second cronut?"

"Well…"

"Yeah, I'm still kind of mad, so the answer to that is still no. My pastries. Back off."

Percy plucked a flake of pastry from Annabeth's lap morosely and popped it in his mouth. "I had this coming, huh?"

"Oh yeah," Annabeth said around the last mouthful of cronut, spewing pastry crumbs from her lips. "Big time."


	15. July I

_July_

The brown paper bag of groceries rustled as Annabeth juggled with it to open the door to the apartment. She shifted it enough to unlock the door and entered, kicking the door closed behind her.

The kitchen table was practically glowing at her like some holy groceries altar and she dumped her load on it gratefully. Reaching into the bag, she tore into a six pack of (caffeine-free) Diet Coke and freed a can. The doctor had said small doses of caffeine wouldn't be bad for the baby, especially if she had been used to drinking caffeine before — and boy, was she used to caffeinating — but she didn't want to risk it, so had gone cold turkey on caffeine the second Rachel had told her she was pregnant.

Even if it was caffeine-free, the can had been in the chiller in the store; there was condensation beading on it. She glided the damp can over the back of her neck and under her chin, leaving a blissful coolness in its wake, before popping the top and drinking deeply. There was a bead of sweat rolling its way down her back underneath her shirt and she squirmed, her face contorting into a grimace.

Had it really been only seven months since she'd nearly frozen to death in Central Park? Right now, she was looking back on that almost fondly and totally got why the city's wealthiest residents decamped enmasse to the Hamptons for the summer. In Manhattan the season clung to you like a moist fur stole, ratty and stained with pollution.

Annabeth blew hair out of her face. On the walk back to the building she'd felt it start to make its jailbreak from the bonds of a hair tie. Now it was snaking down her neck and adding to the sense of suffocating humidity. As she moved to redo her ponytail, the elastic in the hair tie finally gave up and it flopped open, totally spent, in her hand. She glared at the broken hair tie. It's funeral was a brief affair; she tossed it into the open trash can. There was a set of chopsticks on the table that had come with last night's takeout — Percy always left his untouched, preferring a fork. She grabbed them and snapped them apart, gathering her hair into a ponytail with one hand and sliding the chopstick beneath it with the other before coiling her hair around the chopstick and stabbing it into her new bun. It passed the head-tilt test and she decided it would do for now.

Her abs and back twinged as she swung the remainder of the six-pack out of the bag, making her wince slightly. Neither had yet learned what to with her naturally shifted centre of gravity caused by her new pregnancy boobs, which had appeared almost overnight (she had the stretchmarks to prove it). Add in the rounding of her stomach and hefting groceries and her body was totally uncharted territory.

Percy appeared in the bedroom doorway, clad in boxers and a t-shirt. He was rubbing sleep from his eyes. His hair was somehow both flattened and rumpled mess. Smiling at her, his body yawned into a stretch that was abruptly snapped back to the centre when he saw the groceries. "You've been out? I didn't even hear you get up. You should have woken me."

Annabeth sighed and opened the fridge to put the Coke away. "To walk me to the store? Percy, I'm not a child. For the thousandth time. Prophecy or no, I'm not some damsel in distress. I can deal with going to the store in broad daylight."

"I know. I know you can. I'm not saying you can't. But if I do something like walking you to the store, it isn't for you. I know you can handle yourself. It's more for me so I don't spend every second you're gone a babbling wreck in the corner. Come on. Let me keep my sanity. Please?"

"If you want to keep your sanity intact, you'd be better off thinking about this rationally and logically. What Rachel Saw doesn't even happen until the baby's born. I'm barely into my second trimester over here. Tartarus can't rise unless he has our baby's blood, so he's still stuck in the Underworld, right? Ergo, he can't be lurking in the bushes waiting to bump me off. To do that, he'd need the baby so be born and so, by extension, he needs me as a walking incubator. He's hardly going to send minions to take out his only chance of escape's life support machine, is he?"

Percy closed one eye, struggling to take in the stream of words so early in the morning. "Did you just use 'ergo' in a casual conversation?"

Annabeth tucked a hand into her hip and arched an eyebrow. " _That's_ what you took from that? And if we're playing that game, did you just label a conversation in which I talked about the abyss incarnate hiding in the bushes plotting my murder 'casual'?"

"Point taken."

Annabeth dropped her hand from her hip and rolled her eyes, smiling around the strawberry she'd snagged out of the punnet in the fridge. "You're cute when you're worried. You know that, right? But Percy, I am _fine._ Don't stress. I just couldn't sleep. Hardly seemed fair to ruin the chance of sleep for both of us. We're both going to be the living embodiments of sleep deprivation before long. So I decided to get some supplies before it got to sidewalk egg frying temperatures out there." She finished the strawberry and tossed the leafy stump into the garbage disposal.

Percy's forehead rumpled. He crossed the apartment towards her. "Dreams?" He grabbed her hand and squeezed it, green eyes darting across her face. "Everything okay?"

Annabeth gave a small smile and squeezed his hand back. "Actually, not this time." She bumped the fridge closed with her hip. "Try heartburn." Returning to the groceries, she massaged just above her solar plexus. Sure, she wasn't expecting Diet Coke, with or without caffeine, to make that any better but she was only human, demigod or not. There were only so many things you could ask a pregnant woman to give up.

"Again? Did you make a doctor's appointment?" It was Percy's turn to open the fridge now; he poured himself a glass of juice, downing it in one and filling the glass up again.

Annabeth snorted, digging into the groceries and pulling out a loaf of bread. "Come on Percy, we talked about this. I can't go running to the doctor every time something tiny happens. He'll think I'm a neurotic basket case. The books say this happens, so I'll just deal with it the same way thousands of other pregnant women do every day. Grinning, bearing it and making nice with my new best friend: the industrial-sized bottle of TUMS on my nightstand."

She had devoured every baby book and Internet post she could lay her hands on since Rachel had broken the news to her. That day, she had actually been turned into a babbling neurotic basket case and she didn't like it. She was determined that wouldn't happen again and had set about forewarning herself so it didn't. That was how she knew that acid indigestion was a common and usually harmless pregnancy symptom caused by the smushing up of her internal organs and that generally it subsided on its own. She wasn't going to freak out about it because it wouldn't do her or the baby any good.

Percy leaned back against the counter, placing his glass of juice down next to him. His arms folded across his chest. "Well, yeah, but still—"

One pointed glance from Annabeth cut Percy off at the knees, her hands stalled midway through unloading a carton of eggs. "Percy, we talked about this. You're doing the overprotective daddy thing again. I'm fine. Honestly."

"Let me have something. If I can't walk you to the store, let me freak out about something, okay? We've got nowhere with the prophecy. It feels like destiny is this big unstoppable runaway train right now and someone's cut the brakes and there's nothing I can do to stop it apart from get flattened. I want to be able to do something. I don't care if it's walking you to the store or taking you to the doctor or a million other tiny things. Just let me do the things I can do, okay? Because I can't solve our biggest problem here and that's terrifying me. I've got to be useful somehow."

After putting the eggs in the fridge, Annabeth walked over to Percy and touched his face. "You feel that?"

Percy put his palm over her hand. "Your… fingers?"

Annabeth rolled her eyes, tapping Percy lightly on the cheek. "Skin, Percy. It's skin. I'm still made of flesh. I'm not porcelain or something else ridiculously breakable that we could never hope to own because it would end up smashed to pieces on a weekly basis. How many times do I have to explain to you that I'm not going to break?"

"At least one more time," Percy said, taking her hand and kissing her palm. "Always one more time. I'm freaked out, that's all. I just want both of you to be okay. Will you at least let me help with the groceries? Again, if you'd _woken me_ I could have carried the bag back. It can't be good for you to be hauling that around."

"I know you're freaked out. So am I. But not about stuff like going to the store or carrying bags of groceries. We've been through this. There are women in the developing world who go through their entire pregnancies without ever having so much as a blood test. They haul around plenty of weight working on the land practically right up until the birth. Women throughout history have been having babies without problems, even back when doctors thought that the uterus was full of sea monsters or whatever. If they have all managed it, I can deal with a little bit of indigestion and a bag of groceries. I promise you, the first time I think it's serious I will make an appointment but right now it's just one of those things."

Annabeth slipped her hands out of Percy's and walked back over to the bag of groceries. As she took items out of the bag, Percy kept taking them off her and putting them down on the table until she wouldn't let go of a mesh bag of oranges in frustration. It tore and oranges thudded all over the table, rolling to make a break for the edge. Annabeth gave a growl of annoyance and shot daggers at Percy as he got down on his hands and knees to begin picking them up.

Nothing to do with sheltering under the table. Nope. Not in the slightest.

"You get that you just created more work for me, right?" Annabeth demanded, bending at the waist to glare at Percy some more as he reached under the table.

Deciding to ignore Annabeth's question, Percy bobbed back to his feet with his arms full of oranges. "You're not giving birth in history or in the developing world, though, are you? You're giving birth here, in a hospital; we have the doctors to ask. You won't be squatting in a field or whatever."

"There but for the grace of health insurance go I," Annabeth muttered. "Percy, I promise you, if the need arises I'll be the first one to pick up the phone. In the meantime, try to relax or you'll give yourself an ulcer. Then my heartburn will look tiny in comparison." As she walked past him carrying a bag of chips, she patted him on the shoulder.

Percy's mouth twisted, but then he inched his arms up and opened his palms in surrender. He was not going to win this round. Instead, he turned and opened the fridge again, fishing out the coffee and setting to work on the coffeemaker. He jumped when Annabeth appeared behind him, sliding her arms around his waist and leaning her head on his back.

"I love that you're worried about me," Annabeth said. "I do. But you've got to learn _when_ to worry. This isn't one of those times."

"I'm worried about _both_ of you." Percy turned to place one hand on Annabeth's stomach.

Annabeth smiled, standing on tiptoe to brush a kiss against his lips. "I know you are. And I love you for it. But no freaking out on us, okay? We're doing okay. Well, as okay as you can be with boobs the size of bowling balls, acid indigestion and a wicked knot behind your shoulder blade. They say pregnancy is meant to be a magical time but I'm still waiting for the pixie dust to kick in over here."

"Wait, your boobs are bigger?"

Annabeth narrowed her eyes at Percy and punched him on the shoulder; he only grinned at her. "Oh sure, pretend like you hadn't noticed. I've seen you staring at these bad boys since the aliens arrived one night and beamed them onto my chest. Don't play innocent with me."

Percy was still grinning. "Busted."

"Oh yeah, big time," Annabeth said. "Subtlety is not one of your strong points." She looked down at her chest and sighed, prying her thumbs under her bra straps to momentarily relieve some of the tension. "That said, they're not exactly something you're going to miss, are they? I feel like they enter a room five minutes before I do." She gave them one last look, hitching them even higher before easing her thumbs out from under the straps, trying to leave them in a slightly different place on her shoulders so they wouldn't work their way down to the bone.

Squeezing his eyes into a long blink, Percy finally managed to drag his gaze back to Annabeth's face. "No. No they are not."

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "This is usually the point where I'd have a mini tirade but they're so ridiculous even I can't stop looking at them. I was almost late for work the other day because I kept staring at myself in the mirror and rearranging my cleavage. I was at Rachel's last week and her eyes nearly fell out of her head. She had to cop a feel herself. Asked me if I'd got a zoning permit for their construction."

A hacking gurgle announced Percy choking on the glass of orange juice he'd just picked up. "I'm sorry — you went to Rachel's and let her _feel you up_?"

Annabeth shrugged with one shoulder. "Sure. Why not? It's girl stuff. Purely curiosity."

"Huh. Is this… girl stuff that happens regularly, or…?"

"Hey. Drag your mind out of the gutter and hose it off. It wasn't like that. It was just two women having a perfectly normal conversation about their breasts. During which one party didn't believe the other about how heavy they now were so the other party offered up her boobs to hammer home why she's got a crick in her neck you can see from space." Annabeth paused, cogs clearly working in her brain. "And… now as I'm saying that it sounds a lot sexier in hindsight because Rachel totally got to second base, didn't she? Remind me to tell Rachel she owes me dinner. I feel cheap not asking for dinner and a movie before the fondling."

Percy groaned, burying his face in his hands. "Okay, if we could just not talk about my wife getting _fondled_ our mutual and female best friend, that would be great."

"Gutter! Remember, you never know if Apollo's going to start chargrilling people for having unclean thoughts about his Oracle."

"You're the one who let Rachel get to second base."

" _Platonically_. Gods. Now make your coffee. I need to drink it vicariously while I put groceries away and imagine using them to murder you and steal it all for myself."

Percy blinked at her. "You've still not adjusted to the caffeine withdrawal, have you?"

"I'll be over there by the bag of groceries declining to answer that question in line with my Fifth Amendment rights."

Percy smiled. "You can drink all the caffeine you want soon."

"Yes I can. 126 days, give or take." Annabeth returned to the groceries, humming under her breath as she started to buzz around the kitchen putting them away.

"You're counting?"

Annabeth appeared from behind an open cabinet. She was standing on tiptoes to put something on the top shelf and looked the picture of innocence. "No, whatever gave you that impression?"

"It's going to become a requirement after the baby's born. You might end up being sick of it."

Annabeth snatched a pack of Shake 'n' Bake from the shelf and winged it at Percy. He dodged at the last minute and it crunched into the wall. "Watch your mouth. I'm a caffeine-deprived pregnant woman over here. I can't conceive of a world where I'm sick of caffeine right now."

Percy smiled. "How about a nice cup of herbal tea?"

Annabeth's eyebrows vanished into her hairline. "How about I put my foot up your ass? Don't insult me with herbal tea when I've got a monkey named caffeine on my back."

"So that's a no to herbal tea?"

Annabeth paused with a can half lifted into the cabinet. She sagged in defeat, the can falling down to her side. "Chamomile." Her voice was flat and even as her bottom lip jutted as she said it, her top lip curled in contempt. She never thought she'd find herself drinking chamomile tea. "I hate you."

Percy filled the kettle. "Love you too."


	16. July II

_July_

 _II_

"Hey, I got your text."

The bar was aiming for post-industrial chic, with exposed brickwork and artfully rusted grey metal light fittings hanging from steel beams. Nico sat at a bar made from the same polished concrete as the floor — it rose seamlessly from the ground was topped with glass. Wooden stools topped with cracked leather seats rimmed the bar, behind which steel girders were fixed to the wall as shelves for glasses and liquor bottles. To get to Nico, Percy had to walk through a room spread with a mixture of tables and booths. There was a pool table going unused in the back corner. The place was sparsely populated with customers, as would be expected early on a weeknight.

Percy slid onto a stool next to Nico, whose fingers were busy reassembling a cocktail napkin from the confetti he had no doubt only recently finished shredding it into by sliding the pieces around on the bar. There was already an open bottle of beer in front of Percy's stool, so he grabbed it and took a swig.

"Good." Nico was still staring down and shuffling the pieces of the napkin around even as they dampened into immobility thanks to various spillages on the bar.

Percy put his beer down on his own, mercifully untouched, napkin and frowned. "Are you okay? Has something happened?"

Nico sighed and shook his head. He reached for his own beer; it was halfway to his mouth before he realised it was empty. "No. Nothing's happened. Sorry. I was just wondering if you had anything else on Annabeth and the baby. It's been a few days since we last talked about it."

Percy's vertebrae all collapsed onto the one beneath it like the floors of a building demolished with explosives. His back sagged outwards on the stool into a 'C'. "Oh. That."

"Yeah," Nico said, waggling his beer bottle at the woman behind the bar and raising his eyebrows at her. " _That_ little hiccup."

"Malcolm is still looking in the library. Leo and the Hecate cabin are working on some kind of goggles or something for Rachel. They're going to see if they can recreate the Oracle without, you know, having the Oracle. It's a longshot, but it might help. So far, it seems to be involving a lot of explosions of green mist, but you know Leo. I don't think he's exactly hating that."

"But nothing concrete we can use?" The woman behind the bar came back with Nico's beer and a bar napkin; she saw the fate of the last one and scowled at him before balling the new one into her fist and putting the beer down without it. She snatched his empty back off him and walked away.

Percy shook his head. "Not yet. But we're looking. There'll be something."

Nico bit his lip, rolling the new bottle of beer around on its base. "Okay. Well, I was thinking. If we aren't finding anything and if it comes to it, I might be able to… find some things out." He shifted uncomfortably on his stool; it looked like the words physically pained him.

"Wait, what do you mean? Nico, if you're thinking of doing something dangerous, then—"

 _REEEEEEEEEEEEEET._

Nico looked up from his beer with a jerk, turning to catch Percy's eye. "What the hell was that?"

"Oh crap." Percy had frozen in a rigid upright position, nothing moving apart from his eyes, which were swishing back and forth.

"Ever the wordsmith. You're not filling me with confidence here, you get that, right?"

The ground trembled. Above them, the lights began to sway back and forth, the bulbs fizzling on and off. Behind the bar, glasses shivered against each other like the upper notes on a glockenspiel. Chairs scraped back across the room as mortals stood up, looking around.

"Percy—"

"We need to get these people out of here," Percy said.

Again the ground trembled. A crack in the floor slithered towards them, spawning fracture lines of its own as it went, before crawling up the front of the bar. A bottle of vodka juddered off one of the shelves, shattering impact. The smell of alcohol crashed over the room like a wave.

Percy stood up and raised his voice. "Everyone, I need you to stay calm. I'm from the National… Geology Board."

"Ah yes," Nico muttered. He hadn't budged and took another pull on his beer. "That well-known agency the NGB."

Percy glared at him. "There has been some unusual seismic activity in the area recently but it's nothing to be alarmed about. However, we will need you to quickly evacuate the building using the emergency exit at the rear—"

A moped flew through one of the plate glass windows at the front of the bar, sending a jagged blizzard of shards swirled through the room. It ripped several light fittings from the ceiling, leaving behind live cables that jumped and spat sparks. It flattened two tables and the surrounding chairs as if they were matchwood and skidded across the room, coming to rest in the with the front wheel still spinning.

Percy's presence was immediately forgotten. The mortals in the bar scattered in all directions, scrambling for any available exit.

"Not that way!" Percy yelled, drawing Riptide and waving his arms at people moving towards the front of the bar.

"Got it," Nico said, taking another long chug on his beer before clambering up onto the bar. The pupils in his eyes blew wide, swallowing up his irises, and his sword appeared in his hand. Shadows swirled from forgotten corners and under tables, coiled down from the endless darkness of the ceiling above the beams and light fittings. They sloshed onto the floor and then rose up like a tsunami, surging over the mortals in the bar before dashing into pieces on the ground and dissipating into nothing, leaving the room empty.

"What the hell was that?" Percy asked as Nico sat down hard on the bar, swiping beads of sweat off his forehead. "Where did you send them?"

"You know, I have no idea," Nico said, heaving one shoulder into a shrug. "Maybe Tartarus?"

Percy's eyes nearly burst out of his head. " _What_?"

Nico snorted. "Gods, you're too easy, you know that? Yes, you idiot, I sent the innocent mortals to Tartarus. I sent them to Central Park. Big open spaces make for easier landings."

The ground lurched so violently it sent Percy reeling, stumbling away from Nico, who was clutching the front edge of the bar just to stay seated. Several more light fittings jerked free of the beams and crashed to the floor. White-hot sparks bounced across the concrete and nipped at Percy's shoes. Every bottle behind the bar jumped; most came to rest on their sides and began rolling off the shelves, exploding on contact with the ground.

"You didn't answer my question," Nico said. "What the hell is out there? Because right now, it seems like the T-Rex from _Jurassic Park_ and I'm not sure I'm up to a spot of dinosaur hunting."

 _REEEEEEEEEEEET._

Percy swallowed hard. "Not a dinosaur, but I've heard that sound before. During the Battle of Manhattan they sent the Clazmonian Sow after us. I think it's come back for round two."

"No shit," Nico said. "So, it's a pig. You turned it to bacon last time, right? Let's do that again."

"Yeah… I can't really take the credit for that. It was more a statue of Hermes and a pride of marble lions that finished it off. I just… stood there and watched."

"You're kidding."

"Nope."

"Percy, you're supposed to be the greatest hero of this freaking generation and you just sat there and _outsourced_ killing this thing? What did you think would happen when it came back?"

"You know, at the time, what with Kronos trying to take Manhattan and topple Olympus, that didn't really cross my mind. Weird, huh?"

Nico gave a long exhale through his nose. "Fine. Well, assuming you're not keeping a team of automatons in your back pocket, it's from mythology, right? Who killed it last time? We'll just take a leaf out of their book seeing as how you're apparently functionally useless."

Percy winced. "Back then, Annabeth said that she didn't think any hero had ever defeated it. She looked into it afterwards and there's a possibility Theseus may have managed it, but there's so little about how or even if he actually did it we might as well be flying blind."

Nico stared at him. "I hate hanging out with you."

" _You_ invited _me_ here for a drink!" Percy protested.

"Okay, well, yeah, but—"

One second the front wall of the bar was there, the next there was nothing but a roar and falling bricks, steel, glass and plaster. The force of the impact knocked both Percy and Nico backwards. It slammed Percy off his feet and dumped him on top of the bar, smashing the glass top into a spider web. The blow drove the air out of him. Nico was catapulted upside down into a fridge behind the bar, dashing through the glass front. Bottles of beer rained down around him, spewing foam and bottle caps on contact with the floor.

They both groaned. Percy shoved a fallen light fitting off his stomach; Nico untangled his foot from one of the wire shelves inside the fridge, sending another cascade of bottles onto the floor.

"Isn't the little piggy supposed to be _inside_ and the huffing and puffing done by the big bad wolf _outside_?" Nico growled, yanking a shard of glass out of his upper arm with a grunt. He retrieved his sword from the floor, shaking off the lake of beer it had come to rest in. He used the bar to pull himself to his feet, his boots crunching on broken glass. The sow landed outside in front of the bar, creating four craters under its trotters and sending plaster dust hissing from the ceiling. Nico's eyes widened. "That's… that's not a little piggy."

"I'd noticed," Percy said. "But thanks for the update."

The sow raised its wings and snapped them closed towards the bar. Their ears popped at the change in air pressure as the sow skidded back across the street outside, gouging up the asphalt and sidewalk like it was tissue paper. Several parked cars crunched underfoot like soda cans for recycling.

Nico reached up and grabbed a fistful of Percy's shirt, yanking him down behind the bar as a hurricane tore through the building and blew in the upstairs windows. Tables, chairs and the benches in booths flipped end over end towards them. The pool table reared up on its side and crunched through a partition wall into the bathrooms, tearing sinks and toilets off the walls and sending water gushing in every direction. The bar shuddered with the impact of furniture dashing itself to pieces in front of it; above them, spears of wood thrust themselves through a giant mirror, scattering their horrified reflections down on them a million times over.

"Great, now I'm going to stink like a brewery," Percy muttered, swishing his hand around in the puddle of alcohol he was sat it.

"Thanks for saving my ass, Nico. Oh, that's fine. You're welcome."

"I'm just saying, it would be nice not to have been pulled down into a puddle of—"

Nico's eyes lit up. "Alcohol." There was an unbroken bottle of brandy on the floor next to him and he pulled the cork with a screech.

"You think now's the time for a drink? I don't have time to haul your ass through twelve steps right now, Nico. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm trying to kill a giant pig." As if to punctuate his point, the sow gave another stomp, rupturing the sidewalk outside into a rippling wave and popping open a fire hydrant, sending a geyser of water shooting into the air. A steel beam moaned and collapsed into the middle of the bar, bringing with it half the ceiling. Desks and computers crunched through the hole from the office above, spitting splinters and sparks.

Nico scoffed. "I'd like to file that under W for Weirdest Sentences Ever Spoken when we've got time, but for now you actually think I'm an alcoholic? Percy, get a grip. Seriously. I'm not going to drink this. Just shut up and pass me that towel from behind you, will you?" Percy passed the bar towel over and Nico, who savaged it with his teeth to start it fraying before tearing it into strips and stuffing some into the mouth of the bottle. He tipped the bottle upside down to wet the cloth.

"Molotov cocktails," Percy said, grinning.

Nico nodded, wedging the cork back down into the mouth of the bottle and handing it to Percy along with a Zippo lighter emblazoned with a 3D relief of a skull on the side. "Yup. Booze doesn't burn that well or that hot, though. This will probably only piss it off. So I need you to cover me. High alcohol content booze only, okay? Start with brandy, the grappa. Stuff like that. If you find vodka, go Polish. Those guys know how to get a party started when it comes to alcohol content in vodka."

Percy blinked. "Uh, okay. Sure. I'm kind of disturbed you've put so much thought into making Molotov cocktails, but I guess that's a conversation for another day. What are you going to do?"

Nico looked around. There was a bottle opener built into the bar and he began opening up any unbroken beer bottles he could lay his hands on, dumping their contents on the floor. When he'd gathered about a dozen bottles, he wrenched the soda gun free from its mooring. A carbon dioxide cylinder hissed and spat an angry cloud at him. Undeterred, he popped the mouth and trigger system off the gun, leaving him with a hollow tube.

"How does any red-blooded male start the fire needed for a luau?" he said, his eyes lighting up as he grinned. "You gotta throw some gas on it. Burn baby burn."

"You're scaring me," Percy said, although he had already assembled six cocktails out of any liquor bottles that had so far escaped being smashed.

Nico's smile widened. "Yeah? Good." He vanished into the shadows.

Percy took a deep breath. There was a crate behind the bar half filled with dirty glasses; he turfed them out onto the floor and slid his new arsenal into the crate before sprinting to the front of the bar.

"Hey!" he yelled, waving his hands over his head. "Bacon bits! Over here!"

The sow turned on him. He hoped no one could see his hand shaking as he flicked open the lighter and applied the flame to the wick of the first cocktail. The towel refused to catch. He cursed, almost dropping the bottle as the lighter seared his thumb. The sow belched a cloud of noxious gas, crisping a tree outside of the bar black in seconds. Percy turned the bottle upside down; the flow of alcohol onto the towel finally caught the flame and he whooped in triumph. He hurled the bottle as hard as he could, but before it got to the sow it ignited the poison still lingering in the air.

The fireball was huge, billowing outwards and knocking the sow up into the tenth floor of the building opposite the bar. Percy had to throw his arm over his face, the moisture evaporating from his eyes. There was an explosion of glass and Percy was pretty sure he saw the building opposite the bar wobble back and forth on its foundations as glass cascaded to the sidewalk below. Asphalt and concrete splintered like plywood under the sow's weight as it collapsed to the ground in front of the building. Dust rose from the impact crater, mingling with the smoke in the air.

The clamour of falling glass, Percy's ragged breathing, the crackling of flames licking at the tree the sow had turned into crispy seaweed with its breath, and the wailing of car and building alarms swelled through the evening. Then the sow shook its head, flared its wings and took off again. There was barely a scratch on it. It wheeled overhead before tucking in its wings into a steep dive.

Percy scrabbled for the crate of cocktails, making sure to turn the next one upside down before applying the lighter. It caught almost immediately and he found himself momentarily concerned at how easily he was getting the hang of this before he ran out of time for anymore thinking and instead had to toss the bottle at the sow. This one broke on its flank with a satisfying _whumph_ , engulfing a wing in bluish flames and eliciting a squeal so high pitched it dropped Percy to his knees. The sow landed hard on the street, again stripping asphalt like it was old wallpaper, its side blackened. Flaming feathers flitted from the burned wing. Percy wasted no time and tossed the third cocktail while the sow's back was turned. It fell short but exploded on the street behind it, sending the sow skittering away from the flames. Percy threw another one on top of the first, mostly because having a wall of fire between him and the sow seemed hugely preferable.

Then the sow turned and, with a dismissive beat of its wings, the flames guttered to nothing like they were birthday candles.

"Nico!" Percy yelled. "How's it going over there?"

Nico was crouched over the moped with the hose from the soda gun inside its gas tank. He was using it to fill the beer bottles. "Almost done!"

"Good, because right now I'm getting less luau and more campfire in a rainstorm."

The sow pawed at the ground before bowling down the street towards Percy. The ground beneath him thundered with each pounding step. Percy gulped and threw another cocktail; the bottle broke on the sow's snout, but it shook the flames off like a dog would water with only minor blackening as a result. It barely halted the run.

" _Nico!_ "

"Okay, I'm done! Don't get your panties in a bunch." He vanished and reappeared next to Percy; Percy nabbed a bottle from Nico's arms before he had even fully formed. Nico had stuffed the shreds of a jacket left behind by a fleeing mortal into the mouth of the bottle; Percy lit it and hurled it at the sow.

The explosion was bigger and more orange. It spread further across the sow's body as well; Percy finally smelled something reminiscent of bacon. The sow squealed again and came to halt, rampaging in a circle and flattening everything in its path as the flames licked at its skin.

"Again!" Nico said, handing a second bottle to Percy.

Percy flicked the lighter, but it fell to the floor.

Nico glanced up. "Percy, wha—"

"Get down!" Percy yelled, throwing himself on top of Nico.

A cab appeared through the fug of smoke, arcing through the air towards them. There was a moment of screaming darkness and then they were in the middle of the street. The cab had come to rest near the back of the bar in the meantime, disembowelling any straggling furniture or fittings and taking them along for the ride. It had totally wiped out where they had been.

"I could read the medallion number," Nico said, his mouth dry. "Holy shit, that was close."

 _REEEEEEEEEEEEEET._

"I'm guessing they're not going to let us back in the bar after today," Percy said, his eyes roving over the destruction. His heart was knocking against his sternum.

Nico snorted. " _What_ bar? Look at it. It's _gone_. Do you know how hard it is to find a decent bar in Manhattan where they won't rob you blind and the clientele are mostly not dicks?"

"Well, it's gone now. So are the cocktails."

"Yeah. I guess I got gas in my mouth for nothing. Always fun."

"Gas…" Percy looked down. Where the sow had gouged up the street and the dirt beneath it, a warren of pipework had been exposed. "Find Jason."

"Jason? Why?"

"Just grab him. No time to explain."

"What the hell are you going to do in the meantime?"

Percy gripped Riptide harder in his hand and swallowed. "You know. Hero stuff."

"Panic blindly and then wing it?"

"Are you still here?" Percy demanded, rounding on Nico.

Nico rolled his eyes and vanished.

His words echoed back at him in his head. 'Hero stuff'. He was going to do 'hero stuff'. What the hell did that even mean? Sweat slicked between his palm and the grip on his sword as he stood in the street and stared down the sow. Last time he'd faced it, there'd been a team of automatons that had done all the heavy lifting. Now it was all him.

Air thudded out from beneath the pig's wings as it launched itself airborne, heading straight towards him. Percy exhaled, tossing Riptide from hand to hand. All he had to do was keep the sow busy until Nico and Jason got here.

Fingers of flames stretched like taffy as the wind began to pick up. Lighter debris swirled and skittered around his feet. A vortex of storm clouds gathered above his head, pulsing the colours of bruises, churning in circles and growling with thunder. As the wind rounded the corners of buildings, intensifying to fill the street, a low, guttural moan shivered through the air. The pig was almost on top of him now; he could see where the ends of its hooves vanished to razor thinness. There was a tug behind his navel and the wind surrounding him slammed into the pig, tossing it end over end backwards through the air. It spun inside the vortex, squealing constantly; the sound rose and fell in pitch as the pig whipped round and round. Somewhere in the dark recesses of his mind he knew that he'd learned the name for that effect on sound, but the thought was squashed by the headache expanding to the limits of his skull and trying to grow further still.

The hurricane plucked at the ruins on the street like a vulture going over bones, tossing them into the air to join its greedy maw. If Tartarus had an orchestra it would sound like this: a million shards of glass surging together as the teeth of a snarling vortex, screeching and scraping against each other and gouging into wood and asphalt and steel. Percy felt each new addition to the airborne maelstrom as wrench. Every time it lifted something else up, he had to pour more of himself into keeping it going. He could barely keep up a hurricane when he was over or near water; standing on a street in the middle of Manhattan, neither the Hudson nor the East River were close enough to call upon for strength. It was all coming from him.

A sharp pain in his hand elbowed its way past the headache for his attention; he glanced down and found his fist balled so hard a nail had punctured his palm. A rivulet of blood snaked over his fingers.

Where the hell were Jason and Nico?

The pig was flapping now. It had stopped tumbling through the air. Either the wind was dying down or the pig was a lot better at flying than it had any right to be, being, you know, a pig, but each wing beat saw it fighting against the hurricane that surrounded it.

Blood thrummed in his ears and dripped freely from his hand onto the road beneath him, but he'd stopped feeling it. Somewhere, someone was yelling but the voice quickly cracked and croaked to barely a whimper — it wasn't until he registered that it felt like someone had taken a belt sander to his throat that he realised it was him.

Percy's knees trembled and he stumbled sideways into a parked car, letting it hold him up. The moaning of the wind began to fade. The pig was gaining traction against it.

If he'd known that Nico and Jason were going to be this long, he'd have tried a different tactic than trapping the sow in a hurricane. He wasn't sure what, but it had to be better than his plan now, which was leaving him dangerously close to just passing out in the middle of the street and getting trampled and gored. What could be taken them so long?

Shadows bloomed at the edges of his vision, hemming in on both sides. He slid down the side of the car and landed on the street with a thud.

"Percy!"

His eyes snapped open. Nico and Jason were standing in front of him, Jason's mouth open as he took in the destruction around him and the pig whipping around overhead. Both were holding their swords at their sides. With one last blast that sent dark spots bursting in front of his eyes, Percy used the wind to send the sow soaring away into the distance and collapsed to the ground.

The wind dropped. Debris clattered and crashed down around them.

"You think now is really the right time to take a nap?" Nico asked, quirking an eyebrow.

Percy scowled at him. He was out of breath, like he'd just run miles uphill. He could feel sweat running down the side of his face; it was making tracks through the grime. His ears were still ringing. "Do you want to try creating a category 4 hurricane out of nothing?"

"No, but when was the last time you tried hitting eight on the Richter scale?"

"Hey," Jason said. "Did you bring me here to kill the sow or referee a pissing contest?" He paused. "Also, there's a billion joules in a bolt of lightning. One of you should try channelling that some time."

Percy rubbed a hand across his face, smearing the droplets of sweat into a sheen. "This is why our dads never get on, isn't it?" he asked, shaking his head. "Let's not turn into them. Although seriously, where the hell have you been? Did you ride here on a _snail_?"

Nico cocked his head as he considered this. "I think we'd probably crush a snail. Then we wouldn't have got anywhere."

"Fine. A _giant_ snail," Percy growled. "That's not even the point. What took you so long?"

"Sorry, my bad," Jason said, wincing and scratching the back of his head. "I, uh, was having a monster situation of my own. Agrius and Oreius decided to remodel my apartment. Using me as the wrecking ball. I was a mess. Had to grab some ambrosia before heading out. Fighting two on one is bad enough, but when it's two giant half- _bears_ on one? How the hell is that fair? And being on the twelfth floor of a twenty storey building makes summoning lightning kind of tricky."

Percy hissed through his teeth. "Shit. Sorry. Are you okay? Did you get them?"

"Asses were kicked, names were taken," Nico breezed in with. "It got taken care of. No big deal."

"There's drywall in your hair," Percy told Nico, his voice a monotone deadpan as he accepted Jason's hand up to his feet. He picked a chunk out and waved it in front of Nico as evidence. "Was one of the asses that were kicked yours? Maybe through a wall?" Nico also had a fresh bruise around one eye and a busted lip. Blood was crusted under one nostril and the front of his shirt was in tatters.

Nico smacked the chunk of plaster out of Percy's hand and folded his arms. "There may have been some minor collateral damage, but—"

" _Piper_ came to our rescue," Jason interjected with. "They were wiping the floor with us and she came home just in time. Had them sitting down at the kitchen table by telling them they were at a tea party, then poured them nice smoking cups of Greek fire. They sipped, pinkies out and everything, and boom. That was the end of them."

Percy grinned at Nico. "I knew it. I thought you said you kicked their asses?"

Nico sniffed. "If you want to get technical, I said asses _were kicked._ I never said it was us. But we could have taken them, FYI. We were just lucky enough to get an easy way out."

"You know how bears break open a hive to get to the honey?" Jason said. "Yeah, they were going to do that to us but there would be no honey. Just guts."

"Fine," Nico said through gritted teeth. "There may have been _a few_ difficulties, but I still think—"

 _REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET._

"Don't you think we should probably take care of that instead of arguing to preserve your masculinity from the fact that you were saved by an Aphrodite daughter?" Jason asked, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the sow, which was heading back towards them.

They all dived for the floor as the pig swooped low over their heads, its hooves curling the roof of a car to ribbons as it did so.

Nico shoved hair out of his face. "Hey, I'm not sore because I was saved by a woman. Cut that right the hell out. It just makes for a better story when I kick my own monster ass, that's all."

"Fair enough," Jason said. "But speaking of… I take it you had a plan that needed me alive and undigested by bears?"

Percy nodded, rising to his feet and using Riptide to gesture to the exposed pipes under the street. "Yeah. See these pipes? Some of them have got to be natural gas pipes. If we can get the sow to land and Nico can fracture the gas main, you can ignite it with a bolt of lightning and we'll finally have that barbecue we've been aiming for."

Jason was halfway to his feet when Percy finished talking; his eyes widened and he jerked up the rest of the way. "Whoa. Wait. Percy, that's… that's going to be a pretty big explosion. It's not just going to take out the sow."

Percy's mouth thinned to a grim line. "Yeah. I know. But I don't see how else we're going to do this. That thing is going to hurt someone. If these buildings weren't offices, someone could already be dead."

"I could try just zapping it?" Jason suggested.

"Do you think you can hit it?"

Jason looked up at the sow. It was flying so fast its shape was blurred against the sky. "Fair point. If it stays up there I'm probably more likely to hit a lightning rod than the sow anyway. Trying to zap stuff in the city sucks. I hate Benjamin Franklin."

"Yeah. So I don't see what other options we've got," Percy said. "Nico, do you think you can evacuate anyone who is hanging around? Maybe clear the block, like you did in the bar?"

Nico let out a long breath and ran a hand through his hair. "Percy, I can fracture the gas main and probably dump anyone who might get caught up in this in Central Park, but then that's me done. I'll be worse than useless afterwards. I'm not going to have enough left in me to get us out of here as well after we ignite the gas."

"Oh," Percy said, visibly deflating. "Right. We need to get out of here too."

Nico shrugged, getting to his feet as well and dusting himself off. "Well, not necessarily. That depends on your thoughts on cremation."

"Are you sure you're not a child of Apollo? I mean you're so full of sunshine."

"I'm offended by that. And if you tell Will I said that, I will kill you."

"Most people are offended by your personality yet here we all are."

Nico opened his mouth to reply, but Jason cut him off. "I could try and do it from the air," he suggested. "If Nico fractures the gas main and clears the area and you get him out of here, Percy, then maybe I can do it from above and get out of here in time to avoid becoming the Colonel's secret recipe."

Percy shook his head. "I'm not leaving you here. What if you can't get away in time? Besides, if you're in the air then how are you going to keep the sow on top of the gas main for long enough to zap it? It's going to want to come to you."

Nico, who had barely finished dusting himself off, cursed loudly as the sow squealed and buzzed over their heads again. They all threw themselves back down onto the street, this time with a splash; the water from the fire hydrant had finally reached them in a grubby ooze.

" _Fuck,_ " Nico growled, flicking water off his hands and trying to shake it out of the remains of his t-shirt. Percy remained dry but both he and Jason were speckled with dirty splashes.

Percy looked down at the water creeping over his hand; it began snaking its way up his wrist and under his shirt, washing away the first traces of what he knew would be a huge bruise from being slammed into the bar earlier. "Nico, break open the gas main," he said, not taking his eyes off the water.

"What? But—"

"Do it," Percy said. "We'll be fine."

Nico glanced over Percy's head at Jason, who only shrugged at him. He looked just as bewildered as Nico. Eventually, Nico took a deep breath and nodded. "Fine. But if you're wrong you can forget about going to Elysium." He made a fist, closed his eyes and slammed it down towards the street. His arm sank halfway up to his elbow into the asphalt. The street rumbled and a crack gaped open, zigzagging away from them and encircling the exposed pipes Percy had gestured at earlier. A car rolled sideways into the new sinkhole that was opening up, which was gobbling everything in its wake as liquefaction took hold of the topsoil beneath the road. With a wrench and a screech the pipes sheared, followed by the tell-tale hiss of escaping gas. Nico withdrew his hand from the street. The air had already started to fill with the smell of methane.

"I crushed the pipes running underneath us. Tried to block them up as best I could with dirt and rock. No gas should be coming in from behind us. Only from that direction."

"Nice job. Okay, now clear the area. Anyone who could be in the radius of the blast. Get them out of the way."

"Percy—"

"We'll be fine."

"You know saying it twice doesn't make it any more true, right?" Nico asked.

Percy didn't reply.

Nico glanced at Percy one last time but his cousin's jaw was set in that way that Nico knew would never end in him changing his mind, so he closed his eyes. His lips moved but the sound that emerged was not his voice but a million hissing whispers, none of which could have been mistaken as having come from a corporeal form. Percy and Jason jumped when the first street light burst into a spray of orange sparks and glass; it began to spread like falling dominoes away from them in each direction. Sparks jumped and rattled on the sidewalk.

The temperature fell. Percy's breath plumed in front of his face. Goosebumps raced up his arms. From above and below, shadows began to coalesce into a swirling mass at Nico's feet, roiling and bubbling like a whirlpool of ink. Tendrils snatched compatriots from hiding places under cars, between buildings, inside storm drains, and swatted the merest hints of light into extinction like irritating bugs. The whispers rose to a crescendo of static; Percy suddenly realised the only part of Jason he could see was the imperial gold sword at his side, but even that was being swallowed up. He looked down at his own hand and found it lost in darkness, only merely hinted at by the dying glow of Riptide.

Then there was nothing. Just hissing and darkness. Percy felt his chest tighten. He wondered if this is what it had been like when the world was new and Chaos ruled, whether it would be like this again if Tartarus stole his child and rose from the pit. He let out a cry but it died in the air barely an inch from his lips.

The world returned.

He threw a hand over his face, eyes burning at the sudden stab of light. When he removed his arm, he saw Jason blinking and rubbing at his own eyes. The sow had landed and was shaking its head in confusion and stomping around in a circle, trying to throw off the last remaining shreds of shadow.

"Okay, if Nico does that again remind me not to be here," Jason said, shuddering visibly. "It felt like I was the last person left alive in the universe."

Percy looked to where Nico had been standing but saw nothing. His heart leapt to his throat. "Nico? Nico!" He stepped forwards; as his eyes finally adjusted to the return of light, a bare suggestion of Nico's crumpled form came into view. Percy dropped to his knees; it took four attempts to grab Nico's shoulder and not handfuls of debris on the road beneath him. His stomach clenched. What had he asked Nico to do? Even through Nico's jacket, Percy could feel the cold emanating from him like a marble mortician's slab. "Oh gods…"

Jason stepped over to them, paling at the hazy hint that had been Nico not moments before. "We need to get him to Will."

"What the hell is wrong with me?" Percy said, his voice coming out in a strangled whisper. "I never should have asked him to do that." He scrubbed his hands down his face; they trembled against his cheeks.

"Nico's tough," Jason said. "We both know that. And you didn't force him to do anything. He'll be okay, but we have to get him some medical attention fast. So whatever the rest of your plan is let's do it so we can get him seen to."

Percy swallowed, letting go of Nico's shoulder. His fingernails were digging into his palm again as he let his eyes rove over Nico's translucent form. Nodding, he climbed to his feet. "Right. You're right. We have to end this." He glanced over at the sow. "Zap it."

"I feel like I should issue a disclaimer. Just so you know, Piper is not above charmspeaking her way down to the Underworld to get our ghosts to resurrect us so she can kill us again herself if we die here."

Percy snorted. "Ditto for Annabeth. Except no charmspeak, just pulsing fury and the biggest extraction plan since Menelaus launched a thousand ships after Helen."

Jason paused. "We married terrifying women."

"Amen," Percy said. "Which is why I'm not planning to die here. Are you ready?"

Sparks crackled between Jason's fingers. He nodded, swallowing hard. "On three?"

The ground trembled. The sow had finished shaking off the shadows and was thundering towards them.

"THREE!" Percy yelled above the sow's screeching, yanking Jason to the floor as a bolt of lightning split the air and a sonic boom blew in any remaining windows up and down the street. Even with his eyes tight shut, Percy saw bright red and the veins in his eyelids as the pulse of light tore colour and definition to bleached tatters. The water from the fire hydrant arced towards them, ensconcing them in a sphere.

The gas ignited.

There was a cavernous boom and a roar as the fireball sucked in air. The inside of the bubble filled with steam; Percy felt like his face was being pressed to an iron. He ground his teeth together, his jaw trembling along with the rest of him as waves of heat broke over the globe of water surrounding them. One by one in the direction of the sow, manhole covers blew into the air, geysers of flame erupting from beneath them like fiery tongues. Although the street beneath them trembled, Nico's efforts to shut off the natural gas flowing beneath them from the breach he'd made in the pipes seemed to be paying off; there was no sign that they were about to be blasted to pieces from below and the manhole covers behind them stayed in place.

The heat grew less intense and Percy let himself breathe and open his eyes more than a crack. All around them fires were burning. The paint on cars was still blistering and flaking, scorched chalky white like bone. Trees had been reduced to blackened skeletons. Percy let the bubble of water drop. It hissed and spat on any remaining asphalt, which had turned back to liquid save for the circle beneath them.

Both he and Jason immediately started choking on the smoke hanging in the air. The gas main was still burning in intermittent flares. Ash rained down on them, mingled with what was unmistakably monster dust.

Jason had his nose and mouth buried in the crook of his arm. "I am never eating bacon again," he said darkly. "A few slices smell amazing. An entire giant sow is making me gag. And you know this is one of those smells that will linger. Piper is going to make me sleep on the couch until I stop smelling like this. Even though I'm seriously considering becoming a vegetarian as well."

Sirens wailed.

"We need to get out of here," Percy said. "Can you fly with Nico?"

"Probably. I guess it's a good job Will hasn't yet managed to persuade him that food isn't optional."

"Take him to Will. I'll meet you there."

Percy helped Jason sling Nico over his shoulder. Jason grimaced and staggered as he got up, but managed to get to his feet, jolting Nico into a more comfortable position.

"Are you going to be okay?" Jason asked.

Percy grinned. "Yes _mom_. What, you think this is my first time fleeing from the cops and a scene of mass destruction? I'm not a newbie."

Jason rolled his eyes and shook his head, although a smile played across his lips. He was already hovering about a foot off the floor. "Right. I forget how much mess you _Graceus_ like to make when you fight. You've had plenty of practice at this. Remind me to give you another lecture on surgical strikes."

"Remind me to ignore it."

"I'll see you at Will's. _Fortuna_."

"Just say good luck!" Percy yelled as Jason took to the air. "No one likes a flying show off! Especially not one who knows Latin!"

He couldn't be sure, but he was sure Jason's retreating form gave him the finger. He grinned and took off at a run, jumping over flaming debris and hugging the shadows cast by buildings as he went.


	17. July III

**_July III_**

* * *

The door to Will and Nico's apartment was unlocked. Percy burst through and slammed it behind him, leaning back against it to catch his breath. Outrunning the cops had taken longer than he had thought with the cordons they had set up everywhere. He had had to make doubly sure they weren't following him and he wouldn't be leading them straight to Will and Nico.

He slid his phone out of his pocket — which was still miraculously unbroken — and fired off a quick text to Annabeth.

 _Safe now. At Nico and Will's. Don't stress. Home soon._

With that done, exhaustion hit him like a sledgehammer. He slid the phone back into his pocket. Riptide turned back into a pen and he put that in his pocket as well before surveying the room.

Nico was flat out on the couch, still unconscious but mercifully no longer translucent. On the coffee table stood a pestle and mortar filled with ground herbs, an empty vile of nectar and a crumpled Ziploc baggy with a few crumbs of ambrosia in. On top of a portable electric burner, a heavy pan simmered gently, giving off a haze of fumes that cycled through the colours of the rainbow.

Will rounded the corner from the kitchen, drying his hands on a towel. He looked drained, dark circles smudged under his eyes over pale skin. He dragged a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up in all different directions and looked over to Nico, exhaling in apparent relief at what he saw.

"Will, hey—"

Will's head snapped around at the sound of Percy's voice. The towel fell to the floor. Within a few strides he'd crossed the room towards Percy and punched him in the jaw.

The blow and the shock sent Percy reeling backwards into the door again. He snatched at the doorknob for support, seeing stars. When his vision cleared, Will's face was screwed up in pain as he hugged his right hand to his chest.

"Ow. Oh, holy crap. _Ow._ Do you have a titanium jaw replacement or something?" Will shook out his hand, hissing in pain.

Percy rubbed his jaw. He could taste copper; either his lip or the inside of his cheek had split or he'd bitten his tongue. "Apparently I have a skull thicker than concrete but a metal jaw is a new one to me. But what the hell? I just walked in. What's wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with _me_?" Will's eyes were blazing; Percy was sure he saw flickers of Apollo's fire there, like they were about to emit a solar flare and immolate him. "Jason turns up with Nico half dead because apparently you had this great plan that seems to have involved getting Nico to shadow travel half of Manhattan into Central Park and you're asking what's wrong with _me_? You know what can happen if he overuses his powers. He could have _died_ , Percy."

Percy's heart sank. He rubbed a hand over his face, blowing out air through his lips. "I know. Gods, I know, okay? I'm sorry. And I'll tell him that when he wakes up. After he did it, I realised I never should have asked him. I screwed up. I get it. I was trying to make sure no one got hurt and I managed to save everyone apart from Nico."

"Yeah, you did screw up. I mean, what the _fuck_ Percy? Seriously. When Jason brought him in I thought… I didn't… I wasn't sure…" Will stopped being able to form words, his throat tightening to a close. "It was bad, okay?"

"He's going to be okay, right?" Percy asked, standing up straight in alarm. "Jason got him here in time?"

Will nodded. The shadows under his eyes seemed to deepen and swallow up more of his face. "Yeah, he'll be fine. He's going to have to take it easy for a while though. And Nico as a patient _sucks_. I'm looking forward to dealing with that, let me tell you."

"I'm sorry. I really am."

Will sighed and looked back to Nico again, his eyes lingering on the rise and fall of his chest. "I know, but Percy…" He wriggled his fingers through hair again, as if it needed no more incentive to stand up at odd angles, and closed his eyes. "This is really hard for me to say, okay, and Nico would never admit it, but when it comes to you, Nico isn't going to say no. Ever. It doesn't matter if what you're proposing is crazy and has the potential to kill him; if you ask him to do something he's going to jump to it. That's always going to be the case. You were the first person he… yeah. That's left a really deep connection. So please, the next time something like this comes up, don't ask him. Find another way. Because he will do it, consequences be damned."

Percy blinked. "I never knew that. I never even thought about it."

"Hey, there's no reason for you to know. I don't even know if Nico knows on a conscious level. But I know. I can tell." Something flitted across his face; it could have been jealousy, or pain, but he turned away too fast for Percy to be sure, staring back over his shoulder at Nico on the couch.

Percy's stomach clenched. "I'm so sorry. I never should have asked him to do it."

Will grunted. "No, you shouldn't." Then his shoulders slumped down his back and he rubbed his eyes, turning back to Percy. "But hey, I know you didn't force him. I know better than anyone that you can't make him do anything he doesn't want to. He did it knowing the risks. Even if his reasoning was slightly skewed. I just wished he'd realised one of the risks was giving me a heart attack."

"Will he wake up tonight?"

Will shook his head. "No. He normally sleeps this off anyway, but I gave him something extra to make sure he stays under, just in case. Without dreams. He needs to rest."

"So do you."

"No. Not tonight. I will when he wakes up. I'm going to sit with until then."

"Will, you're exhausted. Bringing him back from the brink like that has wiped you out."

"Not more than Nico. I'll be fine. And anyway… it's not going to get easier, is it? We're going to have to deal with worse before this is over. Might as well get used to it."

Percy only closed his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Will said. "That wasn't fair. I didn't mean it like that. None of this is your fault. I wasn't trying to say it was."

"It's my fight, though," Percy said, opening his eyes. "You just got dragged into it. You all did."

Will snorted. "No one got dragged into anything, Percy. We're here because we want to be." His mouth worked, trying to stifle a yawn, but it tore through his defences.

"Seriously, get some sleep," Percy said, frowning at Will. "You don't have to stay up all night. We can do it in shifts. You sleep now for a few hours and I'll stay up with him. I mean, it's the least I can do, after… yeah."

"Thanks, Percy, but I just… it needs to be me, okay? I don't want anything else to happen to him. Besides, you have Annabeth at home to worry about. I'll be fine."

Percy's forehead furrowed further. He shifted from foot to foot, trying to decide whether he should push to stay, but Will seemed resolute. "Fine. If you're sure. But if you need anything, call me. Got it? I'll get out of your way." He turned to leave.

"Wait," Will said. "Let me find an icepack for your face before you go. I'm sorry I hit you. I shouldn't have done that. I was scared. I'd been helping my dad with his search for the Oracle. He's getting all of my brothers and sisters to take shifts up on Olympus to help him look. I mean, I know exactly why the Oracle has vanished and where she's probably gone but I just have to go there and play dumb. He's going to be so pissed at me when he finds out. But I'd been back literally two minutes when Jason landed on the fire escape. I'm not even exaggerating, Percy; I hadn't even taken my shoes off. Two minutes. If I had stayed up there just a little bit longer, then…" His voice juddered to a halt.

Percy froze. "Oh shit. Will, I'm sorry. I didn't even think you wouldn't be here," he said, turning around. "I just told Jason to get Nico to you. I know I've screwed up so badly. And hey, don't worry about my face. I've had worse. And after tonight, I kind of deserve it. Did it make you feel better?"

Will wrinkled his nose, looking down at his hand. It was throbbing at the end of his wrist, sending jangles of pain up his arm. "No. I thought it would, but I think I fractured the neck of my fifth metacarpal bone." He caught Percy's blank stare. "I think I broke my hand."

"Why didn't you just say that? Then everyone would know what the hell you were talking about. Still, I'm sorry it didn't make you feel better. You know, breaking the head of your fourth meta… whatever."

"It always seems so satisfying when you see it happen, when someone gets smacked in the face, but I'm not sure I'm made for this hand to hand stuff. Give me a bow and arrow from half a mile any day."

Percy smiled. "I guess it's a good job I wasn't half a mile away, huh?"

"You're telling me. That would have left a mark you'd need more than an icepack to fix, that's for sure," Will said, turning back towards the kitchen to fetch one for Percy's trip home.

* * *

The smell of Sharpies hit Percy in the face when he opened the door to his own apartment. He blinked, wishing he could enter at least one apartment tonight without getting smacked in the face by something out of the ordinary.

Annabeth was standing in the middle of the living area, an uncapped red Sharpie waggling between her teeth. There was a purple streak in her hair from another uncapped pen resting behind one ear. Other (mercifully capped) Sharpies in a rainbow of colours stuck out from the raggedy bun she had piled her hair into. Her eyes were roving over a map of the U.S. pinned to the wall. The map was covered in Xs and circles and scribbles of all hues, her handwriting crabbed by the pens' thick nibs and the fact she'd clearly been writing vertically.

The only sufficiently large blank space on the wall was behind the TV stand; that had been shoved aside, the rug rumpled in its wake. Annabeth had pushed the TV as far as it could move while still keeping it umbilically attached to the power and cable cords. There was a reporter on mute doing a piece to camera; behind her, emergency vehicles flared blue and white. Over her shoulder, the sky gleamed orange.

"Trading the TV in for geography isn't going to be a permanent thing, right?" Percy asked.

Annabeth grunted, giving a vague nod. Her forehead furrowed into a frown.

"How will you watch the Kardashians now?" When this received no furious response, Percy's eyes widened and he stepped further into the apartment. His foot crunched on a wadded up ball of paper. It was one of several littering the floor. He picked up one of the ones he hadn't flattened and tossed it lightly at the back of Annabeth's head.

She whirled around, the Sharpie flying from her mouth. It clattered against the wall and inked a streak all the way to the floor. "What? What do you want? I was thinking!"

Percy held up his hands to placate her. "Okay, sorry. I didn't mean to break up the party." He paused. "You're not going to punch me, are you?"

Annabeth grunted again and walked over to the couch, flinging herself down onto it and snatching a throw cushion into her lap. Her eyes still flicked over the map. "Right now? No. But I haven't ruled it out. I saw the news. I assume you're behind what they're saying is a mysterious gas explosion?"

Percy winced. "It's not really so mysterious. There may have actually been a gas explosion." He swallowed, sensing he had just lit a fuse on an enormous stack of dynamite and attempting some damage control. "A small one. You know. Tiny, really. Maybe not even an explosion, just a loud bang."

Annabeth's head whipped around to stare at him over the back of the couch. "Tell me you're kidding."

"I'm kidding?" Percy tried.

"There is a chopper circling overhead right now beaming back live pictures to every news network in the country. You blew up half a _block_ and you're telling me it wasn't collateral damage but on purpose?! Are you _insane_? Suicidal? What?"

"Well, I was all out of giant automatons and the Clazmonian Sow was rampaging through midtown. I had to do something." It came out angrier than he'd meant it to, but tonight hadn't been a picnic. He'd already made a horrifically bad call with Nico and that was something that was actually his fault; he didn't need to be blamed for something he had no control over as well.

Annabeth sighed, rubbing her eyes. She turned around again and slumped back into the couch. "You didn't say it was the Sow," she said, shoving the cushion aside. Without even having to look she selected a green Sharpie from her bun and heaved herself up towards the map.

"I'll try and keep HQ informed next time," Percy said, crossing the room towards her. "Although until just now, I didn't even realise there _was_ a HQ. What are you doing? What is all this?"

Annabeth drew a green line pointing to New York City on the map and then began to write on an unoccupied portion of the Atlantic, below Jason's encounter with the bear twins. "I had to do something. I felt useless doing nothing while the world was falling apart out there. So I started plotting the pattern of monster attacks. There's been a wave across the country. Simultaneous ones," she said as she wrote. When she finished, she began using the end of her pen to point out attacks on the map.

"Thalia's lost six Hunters to the Hydra in Louisiana, it likes swamps, go figure, but managed to escape alive thanks to some flaming arrows to sear the necks closed." She moved the pen to California. "Frank's in a bad way. It was touch and go last time I heard. He and Hazel got attacked by the Chimera. They managed to kill it, not least because Frank can almost be as many animals at once as the Chimera is, but Frank was bitten by the tail." She jumped across the country to New York. "Agrius and Oreius almost killed Jason from what I heard from Piper. If she hadn't got there in time… And now you and Nico, attacked by the Clazmonian Sow."

"Nico, Hazel, Jason, Thalia, me…" Percy swallowed hard. "Big Three kids."

Annabeth nodded, finishing writing on the map and capping her pen with a hefty click. "Some of the worst monsters we've ever faced, ones we've barely managed to kill before or at least not without significant help, all just rise up out of Tartarus on the same day to attack the most powerful demigods in the world? Does that sound like a coincidence to you?"

Percy shook his head. "No. Tartarus was trying to take us all out. A pre-emptive strike so we wouldn't be around to fight him later. Dammit. What about the rest of the markings on the map? More attacks?"

Under pressure from Annabeth's thumb, the cap of the Sharpie in her hand clicked on and off again rapidly. Wrenching herself free from staring at the map, she got down on all fours, snagging the wastepaper basket and beginning a slow crawl across the floor, collecting up balls of wadded paper.

"Annabeth?" Percy asked, sinking to the floor right in front of her. As he took a ball of paper out of her hand, he realised they were shaking. "Talk to me. What do the other markings mean?"

Annabeth dropped the bin and slumped back against the coffee table. She rolled one of the balls of paper under her palm, staring at the circular motion. "It wasn't just the Big Three," she murmured. "They sent the big guns after you guys, sure, but as far as I can there have been attacks on children of the major gods across the whole country. Some children of the minor gods have been hit too, but Tartarus is arrogant. He doesn't think they'll be an issue. It's been telekhines and dracaena mostly. Except not everyone can summon lightning or a hurricane or raise the dead. It's bad, Percy."

Percy exhaled. "How bad?"

"Katie Gardner."

Ice sliced through Percy's veins. "But… she's okay, right?"

Annabeth's eyes began to shimmer with tears. She bore down on her bottom lip with her teeth, trying to stop it wobbling. "No, Percy. She's dead. They got her at her place in Kansas. Salted the land as well, apparently. Just to give her an extra kick in the teeth. I don't know if Will knows, but they killed Austin Lake. Drew and Lacy are both gone. Dakota is dead. And then there's just this list of names coming in from Hylla for New Rome and I don't even know who they _are;_ all I know is that they're dead. They're dead and it's my fault. How can I not even know who they are when they died because of me? What kind of person does that make me?" Her voice cracked and dissolved into a hiccupping sob; she clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle it. Tears overfilled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.

Percy lunged towards Annabeth, throwing his arms around her. "Hey. No. Don't think like that. They're not dead because of you. This isn't on us. This is on Tartarus. He sent the monsters after them. He's trying to weaken us." He rubbed her back as she sobbed into his shoulder, feeling her tears soak through the remnants of his shirt. "They didn't come after you, right? You're okay? Even though you're a child of Athena?"

Annabeth snorted, attempting derision but missing due to sinuses choked with crying. She broke away from Percy, shaking her head. "Are you kidding me? I'm the safest person on the planet right now. They're not going to touch a hair on my head, are they? Not until I've safely delivered the baby. Which means I get to sit here with my feet up while my siblings and my friends…" Her voice was so bitter she could taste it at the back of her throat. She dragged a hand backwards through her air; Sharpies rained to the floor around her.

Percy stiffened. "Siblings? Annabeth, what happened? Who else did they get?"

"Malcolm," Annabeth said, her voice thick with tears. "Connecticut. He's in the ER. A mortal found him in an alleyway. He'd been run through with a spear. His wife… oh gods, Percy, his wife. She was sobbing. Hysterical. I talked her through how to give him nectar and ambrosia but he's in surgery. They haven't let her see him. He could die on the table. What good is ambrosia and nectar going to do then? You didn't hear her when she called me to ask what she should do. And all I could hear in the background was his daughters screaming and I thought they're going to grow up without a father just so I could be a mother. How selfish is that? Who am I to decide that?"

Percy plunged forward and tried to snatch a kiss from her lips; she turned her head away and he met her jaw, tasting the salt of her tears. "What did I just say? This isn't on you. It isn't on either of us. We didn't know this would happen. How could we? And Malcolm's tough. He'll be okay. After the Apollo cabin, theatre is the best place for him to be right now."

Tears surged down Annabeth's face as she shook her head from side to side. "These people, our _friends_ … I know we didn't kill them. I know this is Tartarus' fault. But at the same time, Percy, if it weren't for us they'd still be alive. If I weren't pregnant then none of this would have happened." She stopped speaking abruptly, recoiling back from Percy even further. Her back slammed into the coffee table; it shuddered across the rug. "Oh gods." She put a hand to her mouth. Her eyes had gone wide. "What if it was a sign?" she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "All the scarring, the difficulties I had getting pregnant. What if it was a sign that this was never meant to be? The universe was screaming at us, Percy. Telling us not to do it and we didn't listen. We thought we were better than that. I can't help it. I have to be hubristic and now all these people are _dead_."

"No," Percy said, grabbing her hands. "No. Don't think like that. You can't. It's going to eat you up inside. And they're not going to get away with this. I don't care if it's the last thing I do, I am going to keep our baby safe and make them pay for every person they killed." He pulled her back towards him and hugged her close, rocking her back and forth.

All he could see over her shoulder was the map, strewn with monster attacks, including the big red X slap bang in the middle over Kansas marking the end of Katie's life.

It wasn't until Annabeth had succumbed to a fitful, uneasy sleep, winding the bedsheets around her limbs, that Percy let himself cry. At that point, it felt like there was nothing else to do. He was angry and he had no way of taking that out on Tartarus. He was mourning the death of so many of his friends. And guilt, despite what he'd told Annabeth, was chewing away at his innards. He felt responsible and helpless and there was nothing he could do to fix it.

Out on the fire escape, he pummelled the railing like a punching bag until his hand dripped blood and puffed into a grotesque pantomime of the real thing. He hated himself for crying because he knew he wouldn't fix anything, but still. His huge, silent sobs were swallowed by the night.


	18. August I

**_August_ _I_**

* * *

Nico's boots scrunched footprints into the dry, barren soil beneath his feet. The tunnel darkened as it sloped down. It was so steep in some places that it felt like if he lost his footing on the loose material, he'd just go sliding all the way down the rest of the tunnel, like a piece of meat forced down a gullet into the bowels below.

The thought made him shudder. His left hand trailed on the damp wall; his fingers curled into the rough-hewn rock. Crescents of slime and grime pressed themselves up his nails. Fetid air washed over his face, like the tunnel was breathing. It was the smell of death, of fresh and bloody meat compressed over the top of aeons of meals rotting between teeth. He closed his eyes.

His footsteps faltered. It felt like his feet were screaming at him to turn around, to go backwards, to run away. His brain was also telling him to do so, but with more screaming and sobbing.

The inhale began.

Behind him, the tunnel roared and whooshed in growling baritone. Air rushed over him from behind, tugging at his clothes, his hair, sending the stones beneath him skittering and hopping over each other as they were drawn down the tunnel. Nico gripped his sword tighter with one hand, the other trembling on the wall. Around him shadows guttered like the tongues of blue flames, sputtering to mere wisps as the inhale peaked.

It passed. The shadows flared back to life and then vanished into his flesh. When Nico opened his eyes, he cuffed at them with his sleeve, slicing off tears of terror and leaving filthy streaks across skin suddenly devoid of blood.

He forced himself to swallow, no mean feat when his mouth had mummified, and pressed on. Within a few steps, his hand paused on the wall, his thumb flicking over a deep groove carved into the rock.

It marked the furthest point he had dared explore down this passageway in the Underworld so far and he knew he had a lot further to go yet. At least, his brain knew that. His feet, apparently now encased in concrete boots a mobster would be proud of, remained rooted to the spot.

He had to do this. He was the only one who could get this close and hope to come back alive. There were no leads and people were _dying._ If there was even a chance he could get intel to help and stop Tartarus before he rose, then he had to take it.

It's what he had been planning to float as an idea to Percy in the bar, before all hell broke loose with the Sow. Now he was glad that he hadn't; Percy would only have forbidden him to do it and he didn't need any excuses to wimp out.

His thumbnail snagged in the groove and splintered; the stab of pain made him jump. This was the furthest he'd ever been down the tunnel, even further than when he'd been captured by Gaea. So far he'd gone undetected, going a little further each time until his nerves gave out. He was stronger now, more confident in himself, his powers and his place in the Underworld than he had been back then.

But how much further could he push his luck?

The air pressure fell again. Blood from his ruined thumbnail slicked across the wall as he balled his fist, glistening darkly against the background of slime. Once more shadows flared to life around him, helping him stay grounded and not be drawn into the tunnel's maw like a piece of driftwood dragged from the beach by the retraction of a greedy wave. The further he got down the tunnel, the lower the swirls of shadows leapt from his skin, the more exhausted he became. He chewed hard on his bottom lip, his eyes closed, until the inhale ended.

Deep below, where the tunnel ended, something gurgled. Then, like a burp, the exhale washed over him. He gagged. Using the fact that his brain was currently occupied trying to keep his stomach contents down, he lurched and stumbled another ten steps into the darkness before to toe of his boot caught on a rock.

He yelped as he lost his balance, his fingers finding no purchase on the slippery wall. The floor rushed up at him, ripping through the knee of his jeans and biting into his flesh. His sword arm, which was nearer to the floor, bore the brunt of the blow; it rammed his shoulder back up into its socket. Pain thudded through the length of his arm, causing his elbow to buckle. He pitched forward again. His shoulder slammed into the floor and momentum took over, sending him tumbling down the slope.

His fingernails pinged with pain, splitting as they scrabbled to stop his fall. There was nothing to hold onto and the tunnel seemed to fall away beneath him, getting unrelentingly steeper all the time. It felt like he'd been falling forever; far further than he ever thought he'd push himself today. If he didn't get back on his feet before—

The tunnel shuddered.

Despite himself, Nico tried to make an involuntary cry but he was still falling; his mouth filled with the dirt and stones rolling with him. He couldn't breathe; panic overtook him and he released his grip on his sword, ramming his free fingers into the loose ash beneath him. With both hands to steady him he stopped falling abruptly, his body snapping taught like the rope of a hangman's noose.

Breathing in ragged gasps punctured with the occasional terrified sob, he managed to get his knees under him and crawl back up the tunnel, punching into the floor with one hand like it was an ice-pick.

Ignoring the fact it felt like he was plunging his hand into a blender over and over again, he used his free hand to sweep the ground for his sword. His knees kept slipping on the scree, grinding dirt further into his wounds, but he didn't care. He had fucked up and now he was screwed; getting out of here was the only thing that mattered now.

The inhale ended. A silence briefly reined, broken only by Nico's choking breaths. Then, deep below, the tunnel rumbled.

 _Mmmmmm…_

It was almost sexual, a moan of deep satisfaction. Nico whimpered, even though he was biting his bottom lip so hard he could taste blood.

 _I smell… DEMIGOD._

A spear of ice harpooned into Nico's heart and began flooding through his circulatory system like frozen ground glass. He looked to the ceiling of the tunnel, which was lost in writhing shadow. He reached his shredded hand out to them, but they ignored his call.

 _These are not your shadows anymore, Son of Hades. You are too far gone for that. They do not do your bidding down here. They belong to me._

It was like someone had clamped a pillow over his face. He couldn't fill his chest; his diaphragm spasmed ineffectually. He had survived Tartarus with his sanity intact once, just barely. The odds of pulling that off again were slim to none. The last time he'd been down there, he'd been told he carried so much pain and misery there was little else that could be done to him. That wasn't the case anymore; he knew how to be happy. They had more to take from him, more to strip away.

At last his fingers found the hilt of his sword. He seized it, but a bronze hoof slammed down onto the blade, pinning it to the floor in a spray of icy blue sparks. Nico's eyes snapped up the leg to the empousa it belonged to. He set his jaw and wrenched at his sword; it surprised him by coming free, but it was because the empousa had lifted her hoof to kick him in the face.

The cartilage in his nose splayed and crunched. Blood surged down his face, slicking over his top lip and into his mouth. Once again he tumbled into the dark, the time into the clutches of waiting talons.


	19. August II

There probably hadn't been time to buy Malcolm's twin daughters any black clothes.

Five-year-olds didn't have sombre clothes kicking around in their wardrobes. They didn't need them. Shouldn't have to need them.

Except today, they did.

Malcolm's wife, Louise — widow, Annabeth corrected herself — had managed to dredge up matching dark purple dresses from the twins' wardrobes. Louise herself was dressed entirely in black from head to toe, gripping her girls' hands as if they were the only thing keeping her from falling. They probably were, Annabeth realised, guilt puncturing her heart.

Louise's face was a tight, blank mask, her eyes red but dry as she stared at the box containing her husband the pallbearers had just deposited at the front of the church.

The twins were sat in the front pew either side of their mother, their legs swinging and dangling far short of the floor. Did they even know what was happening? What today meant? They were probably too young. How long before they understood that daddy was never coming home?

Annabeth had plenty of black clothes. How could she not? She'd attended too many funerals. Still, she'd almost found herself in the same dilemma as the twins that morning, realising that she hadn't had to wear anything black since her stomach and boobs had ballooned.

In the end, she'd found a black pencil skirt with a clasp that no longer met. She'd had to MacGyver it closed with a rubber band. It was riding down, the waistband rolling and digging into her hips.

Though she'd managed to button a white silk blouse over her chest, the buttons were straining at the boobs, threatening to ping off in all directions and start taking out eyes. To hide the rubber band and the groaning buttons — you couldn't go to a funeral with gaping buttons flashing your bra — she'd had to wrap a long, black knitted cardigan around her. In New York City. In August.

A bead of sweat rolled down her back, even in the relative cool of the church.

She couldn't take the cardigan off because underneath she looked like she felt; strained and barely held together.

Malcolm hadn't made it out of theatre. He'd lost too much blood, sustained internal injuries not even a team of surgeons had been able to knit together.

Annabeth could still hear the phone pealing through the apartment at 2 in the morning the night of the mass monster attacks. She'd been sleeping, albeit fitfully and troubled by unrecognisable snatches of dreams. The phone woke her up, slamming her bolt upright in bed.

Even today, she didn't know how she'd let Percy persuade her to stop scribbling on the map in the living room and get some rest. While people's lives were still hanging in the balance, all because of her, she'd been sleeping as if she didn't have a care in the world. It didn't matter that she was exhausted, the night's events having taken their toll. How had she allowed herself to rest when other people didn't have that luxury?

Malcolm's wife had been on the other end of the phone, asking Annabeth why the nectar wasn't working. Was she doing it wrong? Could Annabeth show her how to do it? It had taken a few beats of confusion on Annabeth's part, decoding the distant background hum of industrial refrigeration units, before she realised that Louise was in the morgue.

She had been trying to feed nectar to a corpse.

The sound Louise had made when Annabeth explained to her that nectar couldn't revive the dead had thundered through her skull. Annabeth didn't know when she'd stop hearing it. A strangled cry, a wail, more animalistic than human; it rose to a crescendo and then snapped itself to a sudden, violent death. Robotically, Louise had said she had to go and hung up the phone.

That was the last time Annabeth had spoken to her. She didn't know if she'd ever hear from Louise again.

There was talk of her going back to Wyoming, where her parents were, after the funeral. Annabeth guessed the city was too much, held too many memories. Plus, she'd become a single mother at the thrust of a spear and had to try and support her kids somehow.

Like many demigods, Malcolm had little in the way of stable relationships with his mortal family and anyway, they were in California. It was something they'd both bonded over, back in the days when they both lived in the Athena cabin. But all that meant there was no one left to help Louise.

So yes, this was probably the last time she'd ever see Louise.

She'd shattered the woman's entire life by getting pregnant and lighting the touchpaper on this massive firework. And this hadn't even been the big final explosion. All this had been — all, she thought with disgust, staring at the gleaming wood of Malcolm's casket — were sparks frizzling from the fuse as it edged towards a detonation that could kill them all.

Most likely, it would.

Maybe Louise was right to leave. To run as far away from the city as possible. Where there were yawning empty acres of open country and sky, a place Tartarus might spare from his initial wrath as he tore down Olympus and New York. Maybe she'd be safe there. Safer, anyway. At least from Tartarus.

No distance could protect from her grief.

Percy slid into the pew next to her, brushing dust from the bottom of Malcolm's casket from his shoulder. He'd helped carry Malcolm into the church. When they had travelled to Kansas for Katie's funeral, he'd carried her into the crematorium as well.

Instead of the demigod way, Katie had opted to be cremated like a mortal, to make it easier to gather her ashes and put them in a crop duster plane to buzz low over a field and release her to the corn.

How was Katie supposed to know that it would have to be someone else's corn that her ashes were released on, because the monsters had set fire to her fields and churned up the soil with salt?

Katie's funeral had been meticulously planned. It was crazy specific for a perfectly healthy 30-year-old, who had no business knowing so much about how they wanted their funeral to go, because at their age life should gape forward for decades. But they were demigods. They knew their expiration date was not likely to be anywhere near as long as a mortal's.

These days, they were lucky if they outlasted milk.

So they planned. So they knew. Annabeth and Percy signed their wills and marriage certificate on the same day, for crying out loud, even though they barely had two cents and a lick of furniture between them, because both of them knew they could wake up one morning and have it be their last morning on earth.

Percy hadn't said anything to her, but Annabeth knew he was going to make sure he carried everyone who had died that night to their final resting place. No matter how many funerals he had to go to.

Malcolm, just like Katie, was having a mortal funeral. It was easier for mortals to understand than a cremation in a shroud at Camp Half Blood, where Louise wouldn't have been able to attend, anyway. Malcolm's family had flown across the country to be there, and there were mortal friends and colleagues who had no idea who Malcolm was.

Had been.

Louise had chosen a church service, even though she knew who her mother-in-law was, but it was what she wanted. It was what she knew. And enough had been taken away from her already by a world she didn't really know or understand.

Annabeth reached over and squeezed Percy's hand, using the pressure on his fingers to try and hold back tears. Percy squeezed back.

Dust motes drifted in the sunlight streaking through the leaded glass windows. The light glowed on Malcolm's casket, winking off the brass handles and the plaque bearing his name. Organ music wound through the church, moaning back at them off the ceiling. The church reverberated with the sounds of clicking heels, scuffling footfalls and the shuffling of butts on hard wooden pews. An occasional cough barked over it all, but even those were stifled, suppressed.

Conversations bubbled, but like a brook that was running dry for want of rain. Everything was muted, muffled, and it made Annabeth want to scream. They weren't going to wake Malcolm. He wasn't napping in that fucking box. It was way too late for that. So was the exaggerated hushed hubbub?

She jumped. The order of service she was wadding in her fist had bit back, leaving a papercut in the crook of her thumb. Blood welled to the surface, overspilling the edges of the wound and probing the cracks and lines of her hand. She stuck it in her mouth and sucked at it, wondering why papercuts inevitably hurt worse than a knife in the gut. Maybe she'd ask Will one day, if she ever got the chance.

"Did you hurt yourself?" Percy asked, his eyebrows knitting together.

Annabeth shook her head. "It's just a papercut," she said, taking her hand out of her mouth for a second. "I'll live."

Percy looked down at the order of service. It was practically concertinaed into a fan. A smear of bright red blood slashed across one of the long edges, languidly blooming through the paper towards the picture of Malcolm in the centre. Malcolm smiled from the rumpled page, unaware of the havoc wrought around him.

Percy wanted to say something, but he was tired of the emptiness of words. They couldn't fix things. Hadn't fixed things so far. Annabeth was at her brother's funeral, their third funeral in two weeks, and there were more on the calendar. What could be said about that? How could he say anything that would make it better, when he was hurting just as much as he was?

Instead he took Annabeth's hand from her mouth, kissed the wound and then put it to his own lips. It was still bleeding, coating his tongue with the burn of copper. "I love you," he said, when the cut started to clot and it was safe to take it out of his mouth. "I'm sorry I can't fix this."

Annabeth shook her head. "No one can fix this. No one can even count the number of pieces it's in. What the hell are we doing, Percy? How many more times are we going to go and watch someone who's just had half their life peeled away and put in a box? What if it's me sitting in the front row next time and you in the casket?

"I don't even have any funeral clothes that fit me and I could be the next widow trying to hold their shit together as their life comes down around their ears. If not me, any one of our friends. I'm getting more and more pregnant and we're going nowhere with solving any of this. People are going to keep dying because of us. How can I look Louise in the face? How can I look anyone in the face, knowing I've painted a target on their backs because I wanted to have a baby?" Annabeth's words started to blur together; it was only the fact that Percy was still keeping a tight grip on her hands that stopped them worrying at the order of service again.

"Tartarus—"

"I know. You're going to say it's not my fault and I should blame Tartarus. But he wouldn't have done any of this if it weren't for me and our baby. Malcolm would still be alive if I'd just not been so selfish. We could have adopted, Percy. Tartarus would never have wanted a kid that wasn't genetically ours. But no, I wanted to have my own baby because I couldn't take that I was a failure as a woman on the basic biological level. I was too damn proud to go to an orphanage and admit that I couldn't do something. And now look. I got everything I ever wanted and everyone else gets to bury someone they love."

Annabeth's breath hiccupped into a sob and she wrenched a hand back from Percy so she could press it over her mouth.

Percy snatched the hand back. "Listen to me. There was a prophecy written about this baby. It was probably written before we were born. Before my dad was born. It was meant to be and I know what's happening now is terrible and believe me, I know how guilty you feel. You think I don't feel that? It's my baby, too. We both did this. But it's happening and we can't change it. All we can do is fight. I hate what has happened to the people we care about. I hate that we have to sit through goodbye after goodbye. But I refuse to blame myself or you or the baby. If we're going to get through this, and we will, we can't turn on ourselves."

Annabeth sighed. "I have to, Percy. I can't let the universe take the flak from this for me. I know that this prophecy was probably written thousands of years ago and whatever we do won't make a difference, but Malcolm is dead. I shouldn't just get to walk away from that."

"So don't. Embrace it. Use it. Walk towards it. Because at the middle of this is Tartarus. And it's going to take everything we have to put him back in the pit where he belongs."

Annabeth trapped her lip between her teeth and glanced up at the casket. Her hands squeezed Percy's hard enough to start her cut bleeding again. "For Malcolm."

"And Katie. And Dakota. And Drew. And anyone else we've had to say goodbye to because of him. When we win, it will be for them just as much as for our baby."

Rachel slid into the pew next to Percy, glancing at their clasped hands and the tears in Annabeth's eyes. A look of pain crossed her face, but she cleared her throat anyway. "Percy—"

"Can this wait?" Percy said, not looking back at her. "We need a minute."

Rachel bit her bottom lip. "I'm sorry. I really am, but no. It can't. Have you seen Will today?"

Annabeth peeked around Percy, taking her hands back from his lap. Blood rushed from her face. "No? Tell me he's okay. Tell me he's not—"

"No, he's fine," Rachel broke in with, shaking his head. "But…"

Footsteps that were too loud and too hurried for the otherwise dim funeral background burble made them look round. Will was darting towards them, skirting around people filing in and looking for seats. He was clutching his phone in on hand. His tie was wonky, the knot yanked tiny around an unbuttoned collar. His suit jacket was lopsided, the buttons in the wrong holes; he apparently hadn't noticed. He kept checking his phone and seemed unable to stand still, shifting foot to foot.

"Have either of you heard from Nico?" he asked, pleading eyes flicking back and forth between them.

Annabeth and Percy glanced at each other and shook their heads. Rachel looked down at her lap, picking at her cuticles, her throat working nervously. Will deflated, running a hand through his hair.

"No one has," Will said. "He was weird last night, said he had an errand to run before the funeral but wouldn't tell me what it was. He seemed really agitated. He hasn't been himself for a while, sneaking off at crazy hours when he thinks I'm asleep. I thought it was just that he was dreading another funeral, because someone inevitably corners him and asks him if he can bring the dead person back and he has to crush them and say no, but now I think about it, it was more than that."

"More than what?" Annabeth asked, her mouth losing all saliva. Wasn't one dead person in a box because of her enough for today? How many more people were they going to lose? She barely felt Percy slip his hand into hers.

Will's forehead wrinkled. "I guess he seemed scared, maybe? His night terrors have been getting worse over the past couple of weeks. They're almost as bad as when he got back from lugging the Athena Parthenos back during the war with Gaea. I know he's dreaming about that jar in Rome again, but he refuses to talk about it." His voice broke and he stuck a thumb in his mouth, chewing on the nail.

"Okay, I hear you, but jumping to conclusions isn't going to help," Percy said. "It could still be nothing. We've all been on edge lately. And even if it is something, we need to think clearly. Start at the beginning. When did you last see him?"

Will nodded, letting out a shaky breath. He took time to moisten his lips, slotting his thoughts together before he spoke. "We went to bed about eleven. I thought maybe I heard him get out of bed around three this morning, but I was half asleep. I didn't even think anything of it until I woke up this morning and the bed was empty." He unlocked his phone again and glanced down his list of calls. Still none incoming, but more than twenty outgoing to Nico.

Annabeth checked her watch. "It's coming up to noon now," she said. "You haven't heard from him for nine hours?"

Will shook his head. "No. And I know that makes me sound really pathetic, clingy boyfriend but it's more than that. This feels wrong. It's not just that he's busy. I try calling him but it keeps going straight to voicemail."

"Maybe he's in the Underworld?" Percy tried. "He could have just lost track of time down there."

"Are you kidding me? There's better cell service in Hades these days than in our apartment. Ever since Malcolm—" He broke off, glancing towards the front of the church. "Yeah. It's not that. Nico said he'd be back in time for the funeral and he meant it. But he's not here. You guys would know if something bad happened to one of you, right? It makes no scientific sense, but I know I would know if something bad happened to Nico. And this feels like that."

Annabeth and Percy glanced at each other again, neither liking what they saw on the other's face. Percy opened his mouth to say something, but the minister walked to the front of the church to begin the service. Will looked pained as the chatter faded and the organ died with a final wheeze, but sat down next to Annabeth anyway, perching on the edge of the pew and staring at the phone in his lap.

"We'll find him," Percy whispered. "As soon as we're done here, we'll start looking. Nico will be fine. He's too stubborn to be anything else. You know that."

"He better be," Will said, swallowing hard as he looked across the church. "Because I can't do one of these for him. I don't think I'd survive it."

* * *

Annabeth hadn't really thought what would happen now.

Percy had gone to help carry the casket to the waiting hearse; Will had leapt out of his seat the moment the ceremony had finished, his phone to his ear before he was even at the end of the pews. Rachel had hesitated, hovering for a few moments before shooting Annabeth an apologetic glance and dashing after him.

Louise had followed Malcolm's casket down the aisle, leaving her daughters sat in the front row with her mother. Now she was at the door of the church as people filed past, receiving sympathies from departing mourners.

Over and over she murmured her thanks, more of a mantra than an acknowledgement of what was being said. A pleasantry — because people offering condolences had to be thanked, though their words inevitably rang hollow, no matter their best intentions, because nothing could be said to fix the grief — on the day she was burying her husband, a day when she shouldn't need to be pleasant at all.

Louise looked taut, a violin string wound torturously tight around a tuning peg, too tight for the string to even resonate when plucked; all it could offer was an empty hiccup of a plink.

Annabeth realised she would have to walk past Louise to leave the church. The flagged floor between her and the door soared to an unassailable gulf, her feet frozen in place, her knuckles glowing white on the back of a pew.

How could she walk past Louise, tell her she was sorry for her loss, when she'd been the one who caused it? She might as well have run Malcolm through in the alley herself, and here she was, pregnant and about to make a family when Louise's family was flitting down around her in bloody tatters.

The church was almost empty now. There was a woman standing at the front of the church, staring at Malcolm's picture, the same one from the order of service, that was blown up and resting on an easel. The woman was trailing her fingers through a floral display next to the easel, brushing the silver-green leaves of olive sprigs that made up the base of the design.

Off to one side, the organist was busy shuffling sheet music and exchanging words with the minister so hushed the church swallowed them rather than echoed them back. Annabeth could tell how much practise they'd had for days like today; they were experts in letting the vaulted ceiling consume their chatter to leave the respectful aura of silence unpierced. Was this even their last funeral today? How many more would there be this week, this month?

And how many wouldn't get funerals, if Tartarus rose and had his way?

Annabeth swayed. A prickling flush surged up her face, radiating from a chest beaded with perspiration underneath the cardigan and popping sweat on her upper lip. It was too hot to be wearing a damn cardigan, too hot to be doing much of anything. She should have brought some water with her. She bent to reach for her blood-stained order of service to fan herself with, Malcolm's face stabbing her through the chest again, but the floor lurched to the right.

She blinked hard, snapping upright. It didn't help.

Her vision tunnelled, fuzzing black around the edges, obscuring the church and reducing it to the halo of summer sunlight burning through the doors. Her ears rang, rising to a roar as the spinning intensified and her knees quit on her. The pew slipped through her fingers — a tiny voice telling her in the back of her head that this was stupid, what was she doing, she couldn't fall, why had her knees stopped working, don't hit the flagstones, what about the baby — and she started to fall.

A cool hand on her elbow rescued her just as she twisted like a ragdoll and plummeted towards the floor. The church stopped spinning and her vision cleared.

"Easy."

Annabeth turned, her head still fuzzy, unsure of what had just happened. It was the woman from the front of the church who'd been staring at Malcolm's picture. She tried to shake the confusion from her head, squinting at the woman. "Mom?"

"Yes. You need to sit."

Athena steered Annabeth to the north transept; the body heat of the congregation didn't seem to have penetrated this far into the church and it was out of any direct glaring sun, making it cooler. There was a plastic chair that had seen better days nestling in a corner, which Annabeth took gratefully. She rested her head against the cool stone wall, slicking it with sweat.

"Thanks," Annabeth murmured, closing her eyes. "I'm glad you came. To the funeral."

"I try and come to all my children's funerals."

Annabeth opened her eyes, peering up at her mother. "All of them?"

Athena nodded. "Yes. Or as many as I possible can. I could not attend all the funerals during the Plague of Athens, for instance. There were too many, and so many people died so fast and went unburied, or were buried in mass graves. Plus, I was sick myself. My city and its people were decaying. That manifested itself with me."

"I didn't know you did that."

"I don't procreate like the other Olympians, Annabeth. When you do it in the way mortals are familiar with, it's easy to lose track of your children. For some, they become mere seeds that have been sown. When you create a child bodily, carnally, the very act of procreation or childbirth is casting it from you. My children are born of mental unions. Each one takes a piece of my thoughts, my talents, myself, and is made into a new person. I am fortunate to have an extra bond with my children that the other gods do not always necessarily share, but it also means…" She trailed off, her head turning to regard Malcolm's portrait. "I feel each loss, too. Keenly. I lose a piece of myself."

"I'm sorry."

"Do not pity me. I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm proud of my children. I like to be connected to them."

Annabeth rested her hands on her stomach, shrinking back into the chair. "Even me?"

Athena's eyes flashed. "Why would you even say something like that? Of course I am proud of you. Look at all you have accomplished in such a short space of time. You rebuilt Olympus, you faced off with Arachne, you survived Tartarus and wars with the Titans and the Gaea. How could I not be proud of you?"

"I thought you were mad at me," Annabeth said picking at the cuticle on her thumbnail until she could rip off a strip of skin with her teeth. "I haven't seen you since I told you I was pregnant. With everything that has gone down since… It feels like you're angry or disappointed in me. And I don't blame you if you are. I am the eye of this storm. Look at the mess I'm making of everything."

Athena swooped down to crouch before Annabeth, taking her daughters hands and halting her fingers a hairsbreadth from flooding her cuticle with blood. "Listen. I could never be angry at you. Or disappointed."

"Malcolm died because of me," Annabeth said, her voice choking with tears. "And he won't be the last."

"Malcolm died because he was attacked by minions of Tartarus. He died because, millennia ago, The Fates wove a web to trap you and this baby in. It is not your fault that your child is the key to freeing Tartarus. How could you have known that would happen? None of us knew. Not even the Olympians saw what was coming. And I'm sorry I didn't come and visit you sooner. But I spoke with Poseidon the night you told me you were pregnant and we agreed that we would try and stay out of your lives to attract as little attention to you as possible, so you could continue to pass under Zeus' radar until we found a solution."

Reflexively, Annabeth looked to the ceiling, where the soaring stone arches were lost in gloom.

"He won't be able to eavesdrop here. Trying to listen in to the goings on in a building sacred to another pantheon is tricky, like trying to hear through feedback, and even if it were easy to hear us, it's just not done. It's disrespectful."

"Annabeth?" Percy's voice bounced around the church, ricocheting off the walls.

"Here," she said, surprised to find her voice had dwindled to a croak. She cleared her throat, about to try again, but Percy had already found her.

Will was hovering behind him, clearly itching to leave, completely unable to keep still. Percy stopped dead at the entrance to the transept, seeing Athena crouched in front of Annabeth.

"Athena? I… You're here?"

Athena turned and stood, seeming to unfold endlessly from the floor to a towering height. "At least someone was. Annabeth was by herself and unwell."

"Mom… he was carrying the casket."

Athena blinked and then began to shrink, a shadow passing over her face. She rubbed a hand across her forehead, shaking her head. "Of course, I saw. I'm sorry, I forgot. I've been… it's been a difficult day. Thank you for doing that for Malcolm."

Percy wasn't sure where to look. He'd gone from close to incineration to a personal thank you in mere seconds. His hands twitched by his sides like fish out of water. "You're… welcome? Lady Athena. It's the least I could do. I wish things could be different."

Athena sighed. "So do we all."

Silence settled over them, so Annabeth broke it with a question. "Where's Rachel?"

"She had something to do with Leo. He thinks he's got a new prototype of the prophecy glasses. Rachel looked like she'd been wearing ski goggles on Mercury last time, so let's hope he's ironed out the kinks." Percy paused, glancing at Athena. "Thank you for staying with Annabeth," Percy said to her. "But if she's sick, I need to get her checked over by a doctor."

"I'm fine, Percy," Annabeth said, shaking her head. "I just got a little dizzy from standing up too quickly and the heat. It's this stupid cardigan." She shrugged it off her shoulders, like it had just become woven from vipers. "It's no big deal. I just need some water and I'll be good."

Percy turned his head to Will, who was staring into space somewhere over Annabeth's shoulder. "Will?"

"Huh?"

"Annabeth. She just said she felt dizzy. Is that normal? Do we need to be worried?"

Will's eyebrows knitted together briefly before his forehead smoothed. "Oh. Umm, no. Blood vessels dilate during early pregnancy and the blood pressure falls. It's probably just the heat. The cardigan. She should drink some water."

For what would probably be the last time in his life, Percy exchanged a glance with Athena and knew that they were on exactly the same page. "Will—"

"Don't, Percy," Annabeth said quietly, slowly clambering to her feet by sliding her shoulder up the wall, more out of caution than actual necessity. She did feel far better. Maybe she'd dump the offending cardigan in the church's donations box on the way out, for all the trouble it had caused her. "I'm fine. Nico is missing. Let's focus on that."

"The son of Hades?" Athena said, her entire body stiffening. "A Big Three child has been kidnapped?"

Annabeth's eyes widened; she looked over to Will, who looked like someone had just punched him in the stomach and he was trying not to throw up. "Mom, no. We don't know that for sure. We don't know anything yet. Just that he didn't come home when he was supposed to."

"A child that powerful does not run into the standard monster troubles," Athena said, shaking her head. "This is serious, Annabeth. If someone has managed to subdue him for this long, then it is taking considerable power to hold him. Assuming he's still alive, that is."

"He's alive," Will hissed, his nostrils flaring. Fury burned across his face. "I know Nico and I know that he's alive. Don't talk about him like he's already a lost cause. We are going to find him and he is going to be fine."

Athena tilted her head, looking Will up and down. "My child, I realise that you are upset right now, but you are far too much like your father. Misplaced optimism gets you nowhere. You're too close to the situation to examine it pragmatically and logically and that's what we need to find him if indeed he is alive."

"He's ALIVE!"

A flash, a crack.

And searing white light blew the church to nothing.


	20. August III

They were in the middle of the throne room of Olympus. Everything glared white and gold.

Ten of the major gods were seated in their thrones, leaving three thrones devoid of occupants. Athena's throne was empty; she was in the middle of the throne room alongside Percy, Annabeth and Will. Hades was nowhere to be seen, his obsidian throne looming and looking like the afterthought it was.

The third empty throne belonged to Poseidon. There was a fishing pole fitted but it drooped forlornly like a plant lacking water.

His dad's absence sent a thrum of concern through Percy. He subconsciously slid his hand into his pocket, closing it around Riptide's familiar pen form, despite knowing he'd never even get the chance to take the cap off before being obliterated if he had to use it.

Percy slipped his free hand into Annabeth's and squeezed. Her hand was trembling but she squeezed back, moving to wrap her cardigan around her with her other arm. Then she remembered that she'd thrown it off her shoulders in the church and it had probably been incinerated.

She'd gone from wanting to set alight to the damn thing herself to missing feeling its absence like a hole. What a difference ten minutes made.

Her belly felt massive, soft, fleshy. Vulnerable. Like it had been freshly painted with a target.

Above them the sky was an angry purple-green that Percy wasn't sure he'd ever seen before in real life, only on the news showing pictures of tornadoes hitting the Midwest. And even then that looked like clear blue skies compared to the seething mass over their heads, which seemed to swirl lower and lower as they stood there. The clouds scudded over the tips of the arches balanced on the columns around the open air throne room, snagging on the shining marble.

Behind them were the thrones of the minor gods, which completed what was now a circle of godly seats of power around the central hearth. Yet all of them were empty. Apart from a flicker of features within the flames, Hestia too was absent.

The entire room felt like a nuclear bomb about to explode. Percy had faced many Olympian councils before, but none had ever crackled with this much tension. Ten pairs of eyes started them down and he never doubted for a second that all of them could obliterate him with half a blink.

"Please tell me this wasn't me," Will whispered, his face devoid of colour. "I mean, I was mad but blowing up a church does not look good no matter what pantheon you believe in."

"You don't have the power, child," Athena said, shaking her head. "This was my father's doing."

Will wasn't sure whether to take comfort in the fact that he wasn't to blame or to be even more terrified that Zeus had summoned him here personally. This wasn't supposed to _happen_ to Apollo kids. They never made a big enough splash to get on Zeus' radar.

Athena stepped forward out of the cluster, growing feet in height for every step she took until she was the same size as the rest of the seated gods. "What is the meaning of this?" she demanded, her voice now booming around the chamber. Her eyes fizzled like an approaching electrical storm. "We were at a funeral mourning the loss of my son."

"Yes," said Zeus, his voice terrifyingly quiet compared to Athena's. Sparks fizzled through his beard and leapt from his eyes. "Your son who was killed by Tartarus."

Annabeth's knees almost gave out and she stifled a moan. She slumped against Percy, who had drawn a sharp breath. The cap of Riptide glinted as he inched it from his pocket.

Athena blinked twice, her eyes briefly flickering to Poseidon's empty throne. "My son was killed by monsters sent from Tartarus," she countered carefully. "But that is where all monsters come from. It has been that way since time began."

Zeus snarled. "I half expected this from my brother. But from you, my own daughter? How dare you stand there and lie to me in this place, in front of our sacred hearth!" He slammed himself to his feet. Thunder bowled down on them from overhead, rolling over them in waves. Lightning slashed between the clouds.

"Father–"

"I know the truth Athena!" Zeus roared. A bolt of lightning struck one of the decorative arches, obliterating it in a flash of blue-white light. Smoking chunks skittered and chattered over the throne room floor like huge dice of burning bone.

Percy yanked Annabeth behind him, the fingers of one hand coiled tightly in her blouse. The other extracted Riptide from his pocket, his thumb resting on the cap. He didn't want to show his sword until he absolutely had to in case he somehow made the situation worse, but he was damned if he wasn't going to be prepared to fight his way out. He'd lose, he knew that, but he'd go down trying.

"What truth do you know, father?" Athena asked, tilting her head up further. Her nostrils flared in a way that Percy found eerily similar to Annabeth when she was about to launch a tirade. Her eyes flashed and her skin gleamed. "That my daughter is carrying a baby that could take Olympus to new heights? Or that Tartarus is still plotting his escape from his prison, as he has done for millennia since he was thrown there? I don't deny the latter, but this is not new."

"This is not just any escape plan! Tartarus will soon have the _means_ to escape thanks to your daughter and my damned nephew who I never should have suffered to live all those years ago. I should have snuffed him out while I had the chance."

The aegis materialised on Athena's arm and a helmet sparked into view on her head. "And then who would have defeated the Titans? Who would have helped defeat Gaea? Percy Jackson has done more for the gods in thirty years than some demigods could achieve in ten lifetimes. And we need him now. Tartarus is rising and we need to do all we can to stop it. And besides, my daughter is carrying a baby of prophecy, one that could see us rise higher than those we enjoyed when we were worshipped by the masses in Greece and Rome. So I don't know which source you've cobbled together your information from–"

"A rather excellent source, actually," said a cool voice, winding its way from a pillar of shadow that had just appeared in front of Hades throne. When it receded, Hades was standing there vibrating with anger, sinews standing out like cords on the sides of his neck. At his feet was a crumpled, filthy form dressed all in black with its hands and feet bound by heavy chains. There was an iron collar locked around its throat.

Will gasped, pushing in front of Percy and Annabeth. His heart soared and crashed over and over again, each time it plunged making him feel like he was stepping off a building.

The tangle of dirty limbs stirred. "Sorry…"

"Nico?!" Will asked breathlessly, his eyes wide.

Nico raised his head. His face was bloody and puffy. One eye was swollen shut. His lips had been busted open top and bottom and his nose was at totally the wrong angle. Blood crusted with dirt made up most of his face. "Will?"

"What the hell did you do to him?" Will growled, rounding on Hades with his teeth bared. His eyes lit up like mini suns and then went nuclear, pulsating with white light even brighter than the throne room. Flames licked from his eye sockets; the sparks danced around his head, shining off his hair to give him a crown of fire.

Will's skin glowed bright red like it was being lit from within; it was the red you saw when you closed your eyes and stared straight at the sun through your eyelids. It had the same dazzling effect; neither Percy nor Annabeth could look directly at him. All they could do was look at each other with their mouths open.

Will took steps towards Hades, leaving smouldering footprints in his wake on the white marble floor. "Well?"

Both Artemis and Apollo had quivers of arrows slung over the backs of their thrones. Every arrow in both quivers floated free, the points bursting into flames and slowly flipping end over end in the air. Artemis blinked, regarding her fiery silver arrows with her head cocked in cool concern. Apollo yelped, sinking down in his throne until he was barely sitting on it at all and looked to be more liquid than god.

Hades sneered. "Enough." He flicked a wrist. The arrows were extinguished and dropped, still smoking, back into their quivers. Will was lifted off his feet and dumped across the throne room, where he slid across the floor and slammed backwards into one of the pillars with a sickening thud. He came to rest coughing and groaning, curling into a ball. The flames surrounding him winked out.

Apollo cleared his throat and got to his feet. "Uh, hey, uncle, excuse me but do you think you could, maybe, you know not treat my son like–" Hades whipped his head round to glare at Apollo, who sat back down hard on his throne and swallowed. "Never mind."

"For your information," Hades told Will frostily as Will used the pillar to slid himself back to his feet, one arm wrapped protectively over his ribcage, "I did nothing to Nico. I would never do anything of the sort. I actually rescued him from the clutches of Tartarus' monsters just before he would have been lost to me permanently. After he was captured by Gaea's forces, I made sure I would be alerted in case he ever got so close to Tartarus again. That is where I learned about Tartarus' escape plan, when I was destroying the monsters that did this to my son. And then I did what he should have done in the first place; came here to the Council to show my loyalty to the gods and ask for their help."

"And the chains?" Will asked, wincing as he pushed himself up to standing. "What are they, just decoration?"

"The monsters put him in chains," Hades said with a shrug. "I've had other things on my mind than removing them."

"More like you hate that Nico kept a secret from you and sided with Percy and Poseidon so you're too pissed to take them off."

Hades raised a hand and Will took a breath, but Zeus interjected. "Brother, insolent though he may be he has a point. Your son is not a prisoner here. In fact, if he hadn't done what he did we would still be in the dark. By trying to break into Tartarus he has done more than any of us here to try and counter the threat." Zeus' eyes landed heavily on Annabeth and Percy; his glance felt like a physical blow.

Hades exhaled. "Fine," he said, clicking his fingers. The chains dematerialised. Then he turned to Will. "But the next time this child speaks to me in such a manner I will squash him like the overgrown firefly he pretends to be."

Will balled his fists but managed to bite his tongue.

"To do that you will have to go through me," Aphrodite snapped, jumping to her feet in a swirl of silken chiton and making most present in the throne room jump. "Do not curse those who defend the ones they love in front of me and expect to get away with it. Besides, do not try to pretend you didn't do worse when you lost Maria."

Hades' expression curdled like milk left out in the Arizona sun. "Don't you _dare_ speak of Maria. Not here, not in the place that was so complicit in murdering her." His voice was as soft as silk but threaded through with almost imperceptible barbs.

"You don't frighten me, nephew," said Aphrodite, folding her arms across her chest.

Demeter coughed into her fist. It sounded suspiciously like 'geriatric'.

Aphrodite's nostrils flared. "Fine. Maybe I am older than every one of you here. I am your grandfather or great-grandfather's daughter. I was here before you were a twinkle in Kronos' eye, Hades. And you've all felt my power over the years. Don't forget that."

" _Some_ of us have felt your power," Artemis pointed out. She was plucking charred pieces of feather from the fletching on her arrows, her fingers mercilessly twisting the burned sections free.

"Quite," Hera said, smoothing her robes. "Not all of us act on our base instincts, like animals. Spawning _bastards_ left, right and centre…"

"Bastards? Was that aimed at me?" Artemis demanded, giving a particularly vicious tweak to one of her arrows. The fletching tore entirely free.

Hera heaved a sigh and adjusted her crown, a smirk playing across her lips. "Well, you, your brother… half the occupants in this room actually. If the _phaecasium_ fits…"

Dionysus tossed a grape into the air and caught it in his mouth. He was lounging on his throne with his legs kicked over one of the arms. "If you can find a shoe to fit those trotters, that is…"

"Gods in leopard print sportswear shouldn't throw boulders," snarled Hera.

Will had limped his way over to Percy and Annabeth. Percy could see he was itching to get his hands on Nico to start the healing process, but having been dumped on his ass by Hades he was holding back. Despite the prickly heat rash surging up his arms from his earlier display of power, Will was twisting his hands nervously.

"Throwing boulders? Is that what your workouts involve these days? That explains the man shoulders. I thought you were padding them and it was the 1780s all over again."

"That was the 1980s, you fashion cretin," Aphrodite snapped.

Dionysus sniffed. "What's two hundred years between family? Anyway," he said, turning back to Hera, "I suppose throwing boulders beats throwing your children."

"That was an accident!" roared Hephaestus, swinging a hammer so hard it knocked a hole in the floor, showering chips of marble onto the tiny Lego city of Manhattan far below.

"Fine, stick with the story you told child services," Dionysus said, his eyes almost rolling out of his head. "What do I care?"

"Do they normally fight like this at council meetings?" Will whispered to Percy. "They... don't normally know who I am. Is it normally this much of a hot mess?"

"This is standard," Percy said. "In a minute, Zeus will–"

"SILENCE!" The heavens rumbled. Lightning flashed above their heads.

"Well that's what I'm going to be prescribing instead of a laxative from now on," Will said, his mouth drying out.

"We are not hear to fight amongst ourselves," Zeus bellowed. "We are here to discuss the fact that Tartarus' rise is imminent because of the actions of these demigods. And we're here to decide what we can do about it."

"Stop Tartarus!" Athena said immediately. "I thought that much would have been obvious. Father, together we can work to prevent Tartarus' rise. And if he does attempt it, we can cast him back down into the Pit."

"You of all people don't get to speak to me about cooperation right now," Zeus growled. "After everything you've kept from this council, how do you expect to have a voice in what we do now?"

"Can you afford to leave the goddess of war and battle strategy out of something this important?" Athena challenged, folding her arms.

"They've already got a god of war," Ares said, torchlight glinting off his breastplate. "One who would never have made the mistake of keeping something like this from my own side."

"And what if it had been your daughter, Ares?" Athena asked. "What if it were Clarisse standing here instead of Annabeth?"

"Clarisse would never have been foolish enough to get herself into this situation," Ares said. "And even if she had, she would make the right decision."

"Meaning?" Athena cocked an eyebrow at him, her nostrils flaring.

"This child is the key to Tartarus rising," Ares said with a shrug. "Seems to me it's pretty obvious what needs to happen. No key, no uprising. I don't even know why it needs a council meeting."

Annabeth's knees gave out on her. Percy barely managed to hold her upright, staggering under the sudden deadweight. She got her feet underneath her again after a while but Percy could feel her trembling next to him, her chest hitching with sobs she was trying her hardest to swallow.

Tears hovered at the corner of her eyes, shivering and threatening to fall. No key, no uprising. The key was their _baby_ , the one growing inside her right now. And they were talking about erasing it from existence.

"Oh please," scoffed Athena. "These child to end the world prophecies are a drachma a dozen. They go back to the dawn of time. Father, weren't you the subject of one of the first of them? The Fates willed that Kronos would be overthrown by his child so Kronos decided to eat them all. None of us would be here if Rhea hadn't defied the Fates and fed Kronos a rock instead of you, father, so you could grow up to overthrow him. What if Kronos has decided to erase all of his children from existence rather than simply devouring them? What would have happened then?"

Zeus gave a long exhale through his nose. "That may be, Athena, but this is very different."

"Is it?" Aphrodite asked. "The Fates willed that Kronos would overthrow his own father. He did and that is how I was born. And then I watched the same thing happened all over again with you, Zeus, and Kronos. Not even we gods can fight the Fates. They weave a tangled web. Maybe we need to embrace the fact that this is what they've served us and figure out where we go from here."

The throne room feel silent. Percy and Annabeth held their breath. Will took the opportunity to slink over to Nico, sinking to his knees beside him and running his fingers through Nico's hair.

Ares scratched under his chin with the point of a dagger. It rasped over stubble. "Casting Tartarus back down into his pit would be quite the fight," he said thoughtfully, his eyes looking almost wistful. "Maybe it is time we showed him who's boss."

"What happened to 'no key, no uprising'?" Hermes asked, although it wasn't so much of a question as it was dry mockery.

Ares shrugged. "Hasty decisions make poor battle plans," he said. "And maybe Athena was right. Maybe we are fated to go to war with Tartarus. Who am I to argue with the Fates?"

"I second not screwing with those old biddies," Dionysus said. "Those damn shears might not look sharp but they'd slice and dice you in a heartbeat."

"You are forgetting something," Hades said, his voice like a bucket of ice-cold water sloshing over the room. "Tartarus represents the deepest pit of my realm. Somewhere it is dangerous for even I to tread. Tartarus is more than an immortal being. He is the essence of evil. The darkest of the shadows. He is currently contained, but he is a primordial being. The first of us all. He can absorb the essence of Giants and Titans into himself without pausing for breath. Is fighting him plausible? Or even possible? I think not."

"Sounds like a challenge to me," said Ares, his face lighting up with a grin.

"More like a gamble," Zeus said heavily. "One that we cannot afford to lose by letting Tartarus get ahold of this baby. Athena, I'm sorry, but if keeping Olympus safe means making sure Tartarus never has the opportunity to use this baby, then…"

Zeus didn't finish the sentence but he didn't need to. A murmur went round the chamber followed by awkward shuffling in thrones.

Annabeth's knuckles glowed white as she gripped Percy's arm like she was drowning. Fire burst to life in Percy's chest and his face twisted in anger as he thumbed the cap off the top of Riptide. He couldn't do much against a roomful of gods but at least he could go down fighting protecting his child.

"Godhood!" Athena yelled suddenly, her voice a little shrill.

Percy stopped in his tracks, his sword drooping down to his side and his forehead creasing into a frown.

Zeus blinked. "What?"

"You once promised this child's father godhood for all he had done for Olympus," Athena said quickly, her words tumbling out of her mouth. "Percy turned you down but now you could extend the same offer to his child."

"Mom, no," Annabeth gasped, her hand scrunching into a fist on her stomach. Turning the baby into a god or goddess would be no different to what had already been proposed. Annabeth doubted there was an Olympian daycare she could drop her immortal off to every day. An immortal didn't belong on earth being raised by humans. Their place was on Olympus. She'd know the baby was out there but might never live to see it again.

"Hear me out," Athena said before turning back to her father. "If we cannot defeat Tartarus, if it looks like he is about to rise, then you elevate the child to godhood. The prophecy demands the child be a blood sacrifice. If there is ichor flowing in its veins and it is immortal, then it cannot bleed out on Tartarus' altar."

Zeus narrowed his eyes and stroked his beard. "It would be easier to elevate the child to godhood now," he said eventually. "If that's the path we're looking to take. That would mean there'd be no war at all."

"You know that it's not a gift you can return," Athena said. "Would you deprive a child of life with its parents, deprive my daughter of her chance of motherhood, just to fix something we don't even know is a problem yet? Why do it now when it may not be necessary? Creating a new god diminishes your own godly power. Is that something you want to do as a just in case?"

The silence in the throne room gaped, a void demanding to be filled and sucking everything into its greedy maw. All Annabeth could hear was the pounding in her ears.

"I propose a vote," Zeus said at last. "A vote for either making the child immortal now, thwarting Tartarus this instance, or to leave the child a mortal unless the circumstances become especially dire and risk an uprising that could be the end of us all."

"You know my vote, father," Athena said, heading towards her throne. Before she got there, a wall of shimmering blue energy appeared, crackling and sparking and blocking her path.

"You get no say in this," Zeus rumbled, sparks frizzling at the corners of his eyes. His voice sounded like a judge handing down the death penalty, giving no leeway to argue. "Both you and Poseidon chose a fine time to agree over something. You are too close to this and your votes are void."

Athena clenched her fists at her side, her own eyes crackling. She let out a breath and retreated from the throne. "As you see fit, father," she bit out.

"This is as I see fit. In fact, daughter, I'll come up with a fitting punishment for you later. Begone!"

There was a strong smell of ozone, a shimmer like heat coming off asphalt on a scorching day, and Athena vanished. Annabeth felt like she was in court and she'd just lost her lawyer, when opposing council had a team of eleven.

"Now we can vote," Zeus said.

Percy frowned, glancing at the empty thrones. "My lord," he started, fighting hard to sound civil when all he wanted to do was let loose on his uncle in a way that would do catastrophic damage to their cause. "Shouldn't we wait for the other gods to get here before we call a vote? Their thrones are empty."

Zeus snorted. "The _minor_ gods will obey us and our ruling. I cannot have them here. Last time there was an uprising of this scale, many of them were on the wrong side. Why would I risk that again?"

Something snapped deep inside Percy. "That's not what you promised!" he yelled, stepping forward even as Annabeth tried to hold him back. Many in the room, even the immortals, jumped. Zeus remained placid. "You promised me that you'd give them thrones on Olympus, cabins at Camp Half-Blood and the respect they deserve. Including votes on stuff like this. You can't go back on that now."

"You are in no position to negotiate," Zeus said. "What I say goes. And I say it is the votes of those in this room that matter."

"That's not your decision to make anymore. You swore to me!" Percy again tried to tug free of Annabeth's grip. At least with an entire congress of gods they stood a chance of getting the majority of votes. With just eleven Olympians casting their ballots, the vote would probably be on a knife-edge. He might never see his child again.

"So, I put this to you," boomed Zeus over Percy's protests. "Shall we make this child immortal today, preventing any future risk of Tartarus rising? Or shall we put everything we hold dear on the line for the sake of one mortal life? All those in favour of instant immortality, raise your hands."

Percy's eyes roved desperately over the throne room, trying to get some insight into the way the gods would vote. The air seemed turgid, solid, clogging in his lungs and windpipe. He stopped fighting against Annabeth's grip, his shoulders sagging. He was suddenly exhausted. What else could he do?

Zeus raised his own hand immediately, as did Hades. So far, so expected. Then Artemis' hand rose as well. That fit; a goddess that took mortals and made them immortal Hunters would have no qualms about doing the same to their baby. The pounding in Annabeth's ears spread throughout her skull, like a bass drum being hammered over and over again.

Annabeth blinked as she caught Hera staring at her, the goddess' hands clasped neatly in her lap. Annabeth would have thought Hera would have jumped at the chance to take the baby from her, but she seemed to be demurring. What was going on?

Percy was still doing his own survey of the throne room. He could feel Annabeth's fingers slackening on his shirt, but he made no further move forward. Ares still hadn't raised his hand, despite everything that had passed between them. Maybe he liked the idea of an impending war? It had been a while since the gods had been at anyone's throats. Could he want fresh hell to be unleashed?

Hephaestus' hand rose; so did Dionysus' after he popped one last grape in his mouth. A roar started in Percy's ears. The five hands were like five stab wounds in his chest but the sixth, the fatal blow? It wasn't coming.

Annabeth's breath hitched. She thought back to that plastic chair in the church, the one that had probably been blown to bits along with the rest of the building. Her legs were jelly; they felt like they'd give out on her ay any second. Five votes. Five votes of out the eligible eleven Olympians. Did that mean…?

Zeus scowled around the room, his eyes narrowed to slits. "And those for addressing the issue as and when it arises, potentially jeopardising Olympus and ending the world?" he ground out.

Aphrodite's hand blurred with the speed she rose it, her silk robes swishing like an ocean current. Ares plunged his dagger into the arm of his throne and then threw his own hand into the air. Apollo looked out of the corner of his eye at Hades, expecting a similar rebuke to earlier, but when none came he also raised a timid hand. Percy was sure he saw George and Martha wink on Hermes' staff as Hermes voted for the status quo. Demeter beamed like spring sunshine on frostbitten ground and cast her vote for them.

Five to five. And only Hera left to vote.

Annabeth caught Hera's eye once again. Something flickered behind the Queen's eyes, almost like she was gaining satisfaction from making them wait. Her eyes never leaving Annabeth's face, she slowly raised her own hand in the air.

Dionysus choked on a mouthful of grape soda. Artemis, still engaged in mending her arrows, broke one in half at the shaft with a single hand. Hephaestus' hammer clanged to the floor, sending cracks slithering away from the point of impact, zigzagging through the marble.

Ares chuckled and shook his head, a smirk playing across his face as he conjured a whetstone into his palm and began sharpening a sword, sending sparks rattling across the floor.

Zeus could only stare at his wife agape, apparently mute with a mixture of shock and rage. He was going purpler than the grape soda currently dripping off Dionysus' throne. "You… you vote for _her_?" he eventually stammered out. "After all that has passed between the two of you, after years of complaining, you vote _with_ her?"

"I vote with her child," Hera said coolly. "That unborn child deserves a happy home and two parents who love it. Athena was right. Godhood is not a gift you can return. I say let them try to stop Tartarus. They have most to lose here. It should motivate them. And they have done what seemed impossible in the past."

"And what if they can't?" Zeus demanded.

Hera turned to Annabeth again, and this time the corners of her mouth twitched in an almost reptilian smile. "Then the child shall be made a god," she said. "And it has been so long since I had a baby to raise."

Annabeth tried to smile back, anything to hide the fact that the blood in her veins had turned to ice.

"So… we're free to go?" Percy breathed, barely believing his luck.

Again Hera smiled. She looked like a serpent who'd found a nest of eggs to swallow whole. "Not quite," she said. "There is one final condition I propose…"


	21. August IV

Will and Nico landed in a tangle of limbs back in their apartment, several feet right of the couch.

It was a hard landing. Nico almost punched his teeth through his lip trying to keep a cry of pain inside; a squeak still passed through.

"I thought you said you were okay to shadow travel?" Will said, eyebrows contracting. "We could have taken an Uber if you weren't up to it."

"We made it, didn't we?"

Will snorted. "Barely. And don't even try to pretend you weren't aiming for the couch. We both know you needed a soft landing." Will sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face. "Nico…"

"Don't, okay?" Nico said, shaking his head. Ash and dirt hissed to the floor around him, raining out of his hair. "Please can we just… not?" Nico's eyes, almost hidden behind purple-black swelling, were dark brown pleading pools.

"Are you kidding me? You went after Tartarus. Alone. Without telling anyone where you were going. And you just want to sweep it under the rug?"

"I thought I could handle it," Nico mumbled, averting his eyes now and refusing to look at Will. "I've been getting closer. I just thought if I could hear his plans then we'd win for once. Is that such a bad thing?"

"What do you mean you've been getting closer? Today wasn't your first time down there?"

Nico sighed and closed his eyes. "Please don't make a big deal out of it."

"A big deal?" Will's voice rose and crashed over Nico. "Are you for real? Oh sure, my boyfriend has been throwing himself at the enemy, begging to get captured and tortured, but it's no big deal. What the hell is wrong with you?"

"This is why I didn't tell anyone. I knew you'd all freak out."

"Right. Like that's abnormal? Like we're the weird ones for wanting to try and stop you getting yourself killed. Tell me what the fuck you've been up to or so help me…" Will let the threat hang, admittedly not entirely sure what he could threaten that Nico hadn't already done to himself a thousand times worse, both today and over the years.

"Please don't hate me," Nico said, finally meeting Will's gaze. "I can deal with anything. I don't care about Tartarus. But I can't deal with you hating me. I know I should have told you. I get it. But I was too scared to say it out loud. I was too scared to make it real in case I chickened out."

Will softened, reaching out to grab Nico's least-damaged hand. He squeezed it, even though his own skin was bright red and protested like a too-tight leather glove. "I could never hate you, Nico. You were dumb enough to go to Tartarus but come on. You have to know that. I'm just freaked out that's all. And trying to make sense of everything."

"I should have told you."

"Uh, you think?"

"Would you have let me go?"

"You think Tartarus had you chained up tight? Nothing on what I would have done to stop you."

One corner of Nico's mouth quirked up. "Kinky."

"Nuh-uh. This would not have been fun. I'm serious." Will got to his feet, wincing as his ribs screamed at him. This was going to need one long soak in the tub once he'd seen to Nico. He helped Nico off the floor, suppressing a grunt of pain as he steered his boyfriend to the couch. "Tell me what's been going on."

"Yes, I've been going down to Tartarus," Nico said slumping back into the couch cushions. "Trying to get a little bit further every time. You can't just waltz in down there. There's a pull on you. It's magnetic. You need to get yourself used to it, build up resistance."

Will closed his eyes. "The nightmares," he breathed. "That's why the nightmares have come back, isn't it? Because you've been exposing yourself to Tartarus again. I should have worked it out. What kind of boyfriend am I that can't work out when someone I love is pulling themselves apart? Nico, last time you went down there you nearly _died_. I don't know how you came out the other side. You can't do that to yourself again."

"Someone had to," Nico whispered through cracked lips. "We weren't getting anywhere. No one knows what Tartarus' next move is. How far he's got. How big his army has got. We're going in blind here."

"We're all in this together," Will said, tucking a filthy strand of hair behind Nico's ear. "It's not just down to you to fight this fight."

"I'm the only one who can get close to Tartarus. I'm the only one who's been down there before. Well, the only one this baby doesn't need, anyway."

"Hey, you think this baby doesn't need you? You're going to be its godfather."

Will watched as Nico's face did something that tore at Will's heart.

"You'd be a better godfather than me," Nico said, his voice small. "I don't know why they chose me. They could have had anyone and they chose me? Are they crazy? I bet Annabeth came close to murdering Percy when she found out."

"Don't you think Annabeth would have said something if she was having second thoughts?" Will asked. "Because you know as well as I do that Annabeth is not going to keep something like that to herself."

Nico said nothing, his fingers working at the shredded hem of his shirt.

Will slid a first aid chest out from underneath the coffee table and opened it up and out, unfolding various levels. Just this one chest was better stocked than most emergency rooms, and there were several of them dotted around the apartment.

He selected a curved stainless steel basin and a bag of saline solution, then snapped on some gloves.

"Still with the gloves, huh?" Nico asked, a wry smile twisting his lips. "After all this time spent patching me up?"

"After all this time," Will said, stabbing at Nico with a piercing blue glare. He nodded at Nico's shirt. "Take it off. And no jokes. I have a chest full of pointy surgical implements and I am qualified to use them."

Nico sighed and peeled off his shirt. His torso was a mass of bruises and scrapes, like he'd been kicked by a horse with sandpaper for hooves.

"That is going straight in the trash," Will muttered as Nico dropped the shirt to the floor.

"It's my favourite shirt!"

"You have eight of these. And one in navy blue because you thought it was black and then when you realised it wasn't you'd already used the receipt to put your gum in and they refused to exchange it."

"I hate that fucking blue shirt."

Will drew saline into a syringe and started using it to irrigate the dirt out of Nico's wounds into the stainless steel basin. He frowned at the black grit flowing out of the various cuts and scrapes. The only thing he was really worried about was Nico's non sword arm, which was pretty well shredded halfway up the forearm. Fingers and hands were always a bitch to try and stitch because you needed the movement in them, so he'd see what he could do with avoiding that. The rest looked horrific but with nectar and ambrosia and enough rest it wouldn't leave any lasting damage.

As he bent over Nico, his own back and neck were protesting. He didn't really want to look in the mirror to find out what being handed his ass by Hades looked like. It felt like not pretty would be the understatement of the century.

Will worked until he'd used up most of the bag of saline and the wounds were all flushing clean. He began patching Nico up with gauze and tape, dabbing nectar onto any of the deeper cuts.

"I'm so sorry," Nico said, wincing as Will used a cotton ball to swabs hoof-shaped bruise on Nico's stomach with nectar.

Will sat back, throwing the cotton ball into the trash. "Don't be sorry. You were trying to help. Just promise me you're not going to go down there again. This is you getting off lightly."

Nico did this thing when he didn't agree but wasn't going to say anything; it was a half scrunch of his nose, a slight twist of his mouth. Will spotted it and cocked an eyebrow. "I mean it," he continued.

"Will…"

"Don't Will me. I am totally, one hundred percent serious. Do not go down there again. Especially not now he knows you've been spying and he'll be on high alert. It's a suicide mission."

"If I don't go down there then we're never going to find out anything about the baby and how to protect it, or what Tartarus is planning. Don't you get it? I have to do this."

Will leaned forward and bumped his forehead against Nico's. "I cannot lose you," he said quietly, his eyes boring into Nico's. "For me, Nico, please give it up. You are not invincible. You are not invulnerable. You are just one demigod against an ancient primordial being and his entire army. You are everything to me, so please, _please_ promise me you won't go back there."

Nico hesitated, then stole a kiss from Will's lips. "Fine," he said, "I promise."

"Thank you," Will breathed, his shoulders sliding down his back in relief. He pulled off his gloves, wadded them and tossed them in the trash can at his feet.

"We still need a plan," Nico said. "Because if we carry on like this…"

"I know, Nico, but for now I think the only plan we need is getting you washed up. You are not getting in bed like this."

Nico wrinkled his nose and yawned. "Come on, I'm so tired and anyway, you just stuck me back together with medical tape and literal prayers. You want me to take a shower now? Won't that undo all your hard work?"

"Fine," Will said, narrowing his eyes. "I'll wash your hair over the sink and you can have a sponge bath."

"Can I say that's sexy, at least?"

"Every time you do, the temperature of the water gets colder," Will said, giving Nico a reproving poke in the knee. "Come on, you just put your body through major trauma. I don't think that's going to help, do you?"

"You'd be amazed at what could help right now," Nico said with a smirk, reaching up to curl his fingers around the back of Will's neck to drag him in for another kiss. Will hissed in pain and reared back, the bruises on his back throbbing anew.

"Not the reaction I was hoping for," Nico said, cocking his head to one side and looking Will up and down. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," Will said. "Just a little sore, that's all. I went overboard with the heroics on Olympus. Turns out I'm no match for your dad. Who knew?"

"Olympus is… a little fuzzy," Nico said. "All I can remember is the chains and thinking it was too damn bright for my migraine."

Will winced, rubbing the back of his neck gingerly. "I thought your dad had hurt you so, you know, I went a little bit… nuclear."

"Nuclear? You? Are we talking about the same Will here?"

"Yeah. Apparently I do solar flares when you scare the crap out of me. And threaten your dad with flaming arrows. Which, you know, went down so well with him. He dumped my ass across the throne room. I slammed into a pillar. I'm going to be sore for a while, that's all."

Nico's face darkened thunderously. "Take off your shirt," he said.

"It's nothing," Will said, shrugging and immediately wishing he hadn't tried as it sent ripples of pain down his spine.

"Take it off," Nico repeated, his voice like liquid silk.

Will closed his eyes and took off his shirt. He turned around so that Nico could see his back, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the wall.

His entire back was one big purple and blue bruise, darker around his shoulder blades and surrounding each vertebrae where they'd taken the majority of the impact. There was a bruise snaking up the back of his head and under his hair.

Nico reached into the first aid kit and cracked a square of ambrosia into two, ripping the pieces apart and giving them to Will. "Why didn't you say something?"

"Because I knew how you'd react," Will said, taking the ambrosia and chewing. "It's nothing. It's just some bruises. I shouldn't have lost my cool with him because, you know, it wasn't actually his fault. Besides, you've got it worse, anyway."

"This isn't a competition, Will. Gods, I am going to kill him when I see him."

"Aaaand here's why I didn't tell you," Will said, shaking his head, "Don't you think there's enough division in the world right now without you pitting yourself against your own dad just because you don't like what he did to me?"

Nico sat back on the couch, folding his arms. "Fine," he said. "But I'm still going to tell him he's a dick the next time I see him."

"That," said a voice, "might be sooner than you think."

"What the hell are you doing here?" Nico demanded, launching himself to his feet and feeling the various wounds and dressings tug at his flesh.

"That's not the welcome I was expecting after I dragged you out of the gaping maw of Tartarus," Hades said coolly, looking down his nose at his son.

"Yeah, thanks," Nico said. "You actually came through as a parent. Give yourself a gold star."

"Would you prefer I left you to be tortured and die?" Hades asked, arching an eyebrow. "It could easily be fixed, you know."

"Have you seen what you did to Will?" Nico asked, jabbing his finger at his boyfriend. "His back is one big bruise. He's more bruise than person right now. What the hell is wrong with you?"

"I don't expect to be threatened by children," Hades sneered, his lip curling. "Although it was barely a threat if we are going to call it that."

"Any more talk of leaving Nico to be tortured and die and you'll find out how much of a threat it was," Will snarled, also getting to his feet. He wished he had his bow to back him up, but he hadn't been lying to Nico – he was pretty good with a scalpel if he had to be.

Hades smiled, his thin lips curving upwards. "Well at least you stand up for each other. That's more than most couples, I'll give you that."

"Can we not force your jaded view of relationships onto everyone?" Will asked, snorting as he bumped the first aid kit closed and latched the lid. "Some of us are perfectly happy. Why is that such an odd concept?"

Hades' smile vanished. "And so my fondness for you wanes."

"I'll live with that."

You still haven't answered the question," Nico said, folding his arms across his chest. "What are you doing here?"

Hades smoothed his robes with his long, spindly fingers. "I dropped by to see how you were doing after… the unpleasantness."

"Which one of us?" asked Nico. "The one you tossed across the throne room?"

"Or the one you brought to Olympus in chains despite him not doing anything wrong?" Will challenged, with just as much steel in his voice as Nico.

Hades sighed, massaging his temples. "I except grudges from my son," he said. "It's our fatal flaw after all. But you, sun boy, aren't you meant to be a literal ray of sunshine?"

Nico snarled and stepped forward, but Will went full-on soccer mom arm save across his chest, "Apology accepted," Will said, one corner of his mouth quirking up into a smile.

Hades looked startled. "I didn't apologise."

"And you'd be skating to work before you ever would," Will said. "But why else did you come here?" He paused. "My lord."

Hades went very quiet for a long time, and Will felt sure that he'd gone too far and he was about to be blasted into atoms.

"I may have… overreacted," Hades eventually said, pulling his robes taut. "With both of you. That much is true. But Nico, what were you thinking? Sneaking around Tartarus, trying to find information… you could have been seriously hurt or killed. Not even I have the power to go much further into Tartarus. You can't do things like that and not expect me to…"

"Freak out?" Nico tried.

Hades shifted from foot to foot. "I suppose that is the correct term. It fits, anyway. But I was so afraid for you, Nico. I nearly lost you like I lost your sister. I do not want to go through that again. So whatever you have got yourself involved in, and I suppose it's fruitless trying to talk you out of it, I just ask that you be careful and stay out of Tartarus. For everyone's sakes."

A shadow rose up from under the couch, engulfed Hades and stole him away.

Nico turned to Will. "You know how I never let you come to dinner with my dad and Persephone because there's no way you could still like me after dinner with the in-laws? You just got yourself on the guest list."

Will smiled. "Who said I want to be on the guest list?"

"Uh, who says you get a choice?" Nico said, slipping his hand into Will's and interlacing their fingers. He brushed a kiss across Will's lips. "You are amazing. How did you learn to handle him like that? Even _I_ can't handle him like that."

Will laughed, throwing his head back. "Are you kidding me? Where did I learn how to handle him? Hi, _I live with the dude's son_." He offered a hand for Nico to shake. "We must never have met."

Nico punched Will's shoulder. "For that, I'm going to bed now."

"I told you, not looking like that you're not."

"And you're going to stop me?"

"Nico…" Will warned.

A smirk played across Nico's lips. "Will…" And he vanished.

* * *

The sound of Percy's keys hitting the bottom of the bowl by the door crashed through the empty apartment. He closed the door behind him with a click, his back thudding against it.

How could the gods make this decision?

They'd just decided that the baby could stay mortal, that they would permit them to do everything possible to keep Tartarus at bay, but then to do this? It was just cruel.

He sighed. That was probably exactly why Hera had suggested it, he reasoned. He knew that her voting with them would come with a cost attached.

His hands balled into fists, his nails digging into his palms. It wasn't _fair_. He spun and came within a millisecond of inserting his hand into yet another wall when movement caught his eye deeper into the apartment and he stopped dead.

Percy turned slowly, not willing to believe what he was seeing. Annabeth was standing in the middle of the apartment, her arms wrapped around herself and looking lost, but she was _there_ and that was all the mattered.

Traversing the apartment in just a few strides, he wrapped his arms around her, clinging to her like a drowning man. He kissed the top of her head then rested his chin on it.

"Thank the gods. I thought you were stuck on Mount Olympus," Percy breathed into Annabeth's hair. "I thought the gods were keeping you there for protection."

Annabeth stiffened in his arms and his forehead contracted into a frown. Something felt off and he slowly uncoiled himself from her and stepped back, taking her in. Her grey eyes were darting around the apartment like a caged bird and she was still hugging herself; she hadn't reciprocated his embrace and her arms had remained firmly folded across her chest.

She looked like she was trying to say something but couldn't get the words out, her throat working but no sound passing her lips.

"Annabeth?"

"Where am I?" she croaked, untucking her hands to wave one in front of her face, examining it front and back. Her wedding ring glinted in the light.

"Home," Percy said with some hesitation, a brewing cauldron of feelings bubbling away in his chest. "Are you okay?"

Annabeth reached up and touched her face, running her fingers over her features and through her hair. Then she looked down and spotted her stomach. She turned the colour of four-day-old oatmeal, the colour plunging from her face.

"I'm with child." She staggered to the couch and sank into it, putting her head into her hands. "How can this be?"

Percy closed his eyes. "Athena," he said, shaking his head. The cauldron in his stomach overflowed, extinguishing the fire burning beneath it. It wasn't Annabeth at all.

That meant Annabeth was still stuck up on Olympus. Still under 'protection' from the gods, like she was the damn Ophiotaurus all over again, except she was a _person_. How could they do this to her? To them?

Athena looked up sharply. "You recognise me? Even like this?"

"You've got Annabeth's face and body," Percy said, "but yeah, when there's a goddess in the living room you kind of notice." He paused, remembering the hug. "Well, eventually."

"What has happened to me?"

"I'm guessing you were cast down from Olympus," Percy said, rounding the couch and sitting opposite Athena on the coffee table. "Into the body of Annabeth. To replace her while she's under the gods' protection."

"My father did this to me?"

"I think he's the only one with the power to, yeah," Percy said. "He's done it to Apollo enough times, after all. Are you saying that you've never…?"

Athena's nostrils flared. "Have I ever been cast down from Olympus? How dare you ask such a question? I am the model of probity. My father has never…" She swallowed hard. "Apollo is a fool. A perpetual child. He makes the kind of mistakes our father deems below the gods every century or so. I… this is new to me."

"I'm sorry," Percy said, wondering if Athena still had enough power left in her to sear his hand off at the wrist if he did what he wanted to do and reach over for her arm. After a brief hesitation he chanced it anyway; his hand remained in tact. "This shouldn't have happened to you. You kept our secret and paid the price."

Athena sighed. "I'd do the same again," she said. "My father is wrong. I believe we can win this war in a way that will put Tartarus back where he belongs for good, severely weakened. We have to show him we're right."


	22. September I

**September I**

The next few weeks were a long adjustment period.

It turned out living with your mother-in-law, who looked like your wife but was in fact a goddess cast down from the heavens for misdeeds, was kind of a mindfuck. Who knew?

Still, they hadn't killed each other and Athena had only started one minor fire (she'd seen Percy heat up dinner in the microwave and thought it might work the same for damp laundry), so Percy was going to chalk it up as a big win.

A gnawing pit in Percy's stomach chewed over the fact that while Athena was down on Earth and at least accounted for, he hadn't heard from his dad since before the debacle began. Maybe he'd been cast down to Earth too, but Percy thought he'd have heard from him by now if that was the case.

Still, between missing Annabeth and trying to figure out what the hell they were going to do about Tartarus, he didn't have much time to worry. Nico and Rachel were currently sat on the couch discussing their options. Rachel had bought a sports bag full of magazines for Annabeth to read while she was stuck on Olympus; Percy was going to take them to her the next time he saw her.

They were interrupted when Athena came in and threw Annabeth's purse down on a side table. She slammed the door closed.

"Are you... are you okay?" Percy asked tentatively, like he was testing the ground for land mines.

"No I am not," Athena snarled "A man in a bright orange vest garment just whistled at me in the street and told me to smile. For no reason!"

"Yeah... that happens," Rachel said, wrinkling her nose. "Sorry. Men suck." Nico and Percy looked up sharply. " _Most_ men," she corrected, rolling her eyes. "Gods, don't be so fragile. I can't help it if it's so easy to tar you all with the same brush."

Athena's forehead creased. "But why does this happen? I don't understand. I looked at him and I said I didn't see anything to be smiling about. Because there wasn't. He was uglier than Ariadne _after_ I turned her into a spider. Plus, I'm cast down to Earth in this mortal body, my breasts are giving me back ache and you can't tell me a mortal's feet are meant to be swollen to this size."

Rachel winced. "Yeah, you're not supposed to engage. It doesn't end well."

"Well, I did," Athena snorted. "I told him I was a goddess and how dare he talk to me like that? I've blinded men for less, after all. But then he said he'd call me whatever I wanted when I was flat on my back."

Percy squeaked. "Oh."

"Quite. I was going to burn his eyeballs from his skull as if he'd caught me bathing but then I remembered I was stuck in this stupid mortal body."

"You know, I wonder if you're where the inspiration for Mace came from?" Rachel mused.

Athena looked perplexed. "I don't have a mace. I would never be able to fit one in this purse." She paused, looking at the purse in disgust because it would never conceal medieval armaments. "Should I be carrying a mace for protection? I saw an old woman today with a wheeled bag. A mace might fit in one of those. But I don't think these mortal biceps could give me the swing I'd need." Athena planted her feet like she was on a home plate and readied her hands like she was about to take a swing at a ball (or someone's head).

"Mace is actually... you know what, never mind." Rachel decided it was better not to give Athena and more idea, given that she was still practising swinging to cave someone's face in.

"So if you didn't burn out his eyes, what did you do to him?" Nico asked, cocking his head. "What's next on the list after searing someone's eyeballs out?"

"Oh. That. I punched him in the throat."

Nico's jaw dropped. "Well. Huh. That… that certainly sends a message."

"Exactly. I think his trachea collapsed. He won't be whistling on the streets for quite some time." She dusted off her hands, looking pleased with herself. "But anyway, all the way home something was troubling me."

Nic's eyes narrowed, shifting left and right as the cogs turned in his head. "So… something was bothering you other than the construction worker you left curled in the foetal position?"

Athena ignored him. "He said something I don't understand."

"This would be _before_ you punched him in the throat, right?" Nico asked.

Athena's eyes flashed, the steel-grey irises all but morphing into throwing stars and spinning towards him.

Nico swallowed hard. "Just checking."

"Good," Athena growled. "Remember, I won't be in the mortal body forever boy."

"This is just like talking to Annabeth," Nico said. "Really, the impression is uncanny."

Athena took a deep breath and pursed her lips, her fingers twitching at her sides. She let out a calming exhale and then turned away from Nico to speak to Rachel. "This orange vest man told me to shake my booty over to him. Then apparently he'd give me something to smile about. But what did he mean? What is booty?"

Nico made a strangled barking sound and slapped a hand over his mouth.

Athena scowled at him. "Don't mock me boy for not understanding his reference. Are you surprised I'm confused? As you can see I'm not wearing any jewellery."

Rachel blinked, then started rubbing one eye as if trying to massage away a coming migraine. "Jewellery?"she asked, sounding as if she'd rather be doing anything else than asking the question.

"Yes!" Athena snapped. "Gold! Diamonds! Trinkets and baubles you humans like to drape yourselves in. That is the meaning of booty, yes? Treasure? I'm sure I overheard some pirates saying this just the other day."

Nico let out a snort of laughter. "By the other day... do you mean four hundred years ago?"

Athena's nostrils flared. "Now you mock me for my age?"

Nico held up his hand, his eyes widening. Then he mimed locking his lips tightly closed. "You know what? I'm going to stop talking now. This is just too deep a hole I'm apparently digging."

"That would be prudent." Again Athena turned to Rachel. "Booty has a new meaning then?"

Rachel's eyes burst wide and slid over to Nico.

"Don't look at me," Nico said, shaking his head. "I am done. 100 per cent out. I already said I was shutting up for self-preservation."

Rachel bit her lip. "Okay. Yeah. It... he meant... Well, booty means your butt."

"My rear?" Sparks leapt across Athena's eyes. She spun on her heel and snatched her purse off the table.

"Wait, where are you going?" Percy asked, rounding the couch with his arms outstretched, as if there was anything he could actually do to stop her.

"I'm going to use one of Annabeth's money substitution plastic rectangles to purchase myself a mace!"

"Don't forget the wheeled trolley to carry it in," Nico chimed in, smiling widely.

"Excellent point!" Athena said, nodding vigorously as she shoved cardigan buttons through the wrong holes in anger. "Then we shall see who dares whistle at me!"

"Nico!" Percy barked, clipping Nico upside the ear.

Nico's smile widened. "What? I'm helping."

"Sure, just like I would be helping you breathe if I _strangled you_ ," Percy growled, crossing the room to gently take Annabeth's purse from her. "Lady Athena, I don't think a mace is a _wise_ investment. It's big, it's bulky and like you said I don't think you've got the swing it deserves right now. Maybe we could… revisit this at a later date."

Athena's shoulders slumped. "Perhaps you're right," she sighed, letting Percy take the purse off her and fumbling with her cardigan. "Maybe what I need is for you to fetch me some tasty triangular processed corn snacks. This body is demanding them."

Percy nodded. "I can do that," he said, heading towards the kitchen.

"Good," Athena said. "And I want them dipped in iced cream."


	23. October I

"This is a strange tradition to continue," Athena said. She stirred a bowl of candy in her arms absently. "Most mortals have long forgotten about the gods, about Olympus. But they're still dressing up for Samhaim."

"We call it Halloween, remember?" Percy said, opening a bottle of beer. "I don't want Annabeth coming back and all the neighbours remember her wishing them a happy Samhaim like she's turned into some new age guru."

Athena sighed and shook her head. "So many rules. And for what? All for a bunch of gluttonous children." She stirred the bowl again, trying to rearrange the candy it looked like there was more of it. "I tell them one piece of candy each and it's like they don't even hear me."

"Yeah," mumbled Nico through the Red Vine dangling out of the corner of his mouth. "Kids are so damn greedy."

Will rolled his eyes and leaned over to pluck the Red Vine from Nico's teeth so he could kiss a smear of chocolate from his lips. "And with us setting such a great example…" He stuck the Red Vine in his own mouth and bit off a large chunk.

"You two are so cute it's making my teeth hurt," Rachel said, reaching for another Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

"That's probably the candy," Athena told her. "I believe mortal teeth go porous and fall out with age."

Rachel's eyes narrowed."With age?" she demanded, her eyebrows shooting up towards her hairline.

"Well, you're twice the age of most of the Oracles over the past millennium," Athena said. She plucked her lip as she considered the maths. "Maybe even three times by now."

The door knocked again; Athena turned to answer it.

"That better be an axe murderer," Rachel muttered under her breath. She unwrapped her Peanut Butter Cup with defiance anyway, admittedly trying to remember when her last appointment with her dentist had been.

"Oh look!" Athena said, hugging the bowl to her so she could clap her hands with delight. "This child has dressed up as Medus–" Athena fell ominously silent mid-sentence; it was punctured only by the crinkling sound of a theatre audience simultaneously opening up bags of sweets.

"Athena?" Percy asked. He turned to face the door. Where Athena had been seconds before, a giant lump of rock now stood. Percy's eyes widened and he dropped his beer. The bottle shattered on the tile, sending shards of glass skimming over the floor.

"That better not have been my beer," Nico said, as the three seated in the living room turned to look at Percy's ashen face.

"We have a problem," Percy said, his voice coming out as a hoarse whisper.

"So you _did_ spill my beer?" Nico asked.

"Bigger problem than that," Percy gritted out, sidling from the kitchen towards the door and keeping his eyes on the floor.

"Okay. We're out of beer? Because I will go to 7-Eleven and fix that right now. No big deal."

Percy's head snapped round in exasperation. "Will you shut up? Look at Athena!" Nico's head turned, but Percy threw out his hands. "Wait, no! No. Do _not_ look at Athena."

Nico blinked. "Is the problem that you're having a stroke, by any chance?"

Percy's eyes scanned the room; it was reflected dully in the off television. "Use the TV. Look at Athena in the TV."

The three in the living room turned their heads to the TV and surveyed the room behind them via its black depths.

"Has she…" Rachel started, her forehead crinkled into a frown. Suddenly, her features blew wide in understanding. She swallowed hard. "Oh. I didn't _actually_ want it to be an axe murderer, guys. Just so we're clear. Or the monster equivalent, anyway."

Athena's form disappeared in a swirl of shadows and reappeared closer to the door, slamming it closed. Nico was on his feet, his sword drawn.

"You can't bar the door with Athena!" Percy yelped, spinning to face Nico.

"Do you see anything else that heavy hanging around?" Nico said with a shrug. "Besides, I think it's a little late to be worrying about her wellbeing. She is a _rock_ , Percy."

"Can goddesses even get petrified?" Rachel asked.

The door rattled in its frame. Athena's statue wobbled back on its base but then slammed forwards into the door again.

Nico gave Rachel a hefty dose of sideye, adding a giant flourish with his arms in Athena's direction. "Uh, hi. Exhibit A."

"I know that," Rachel duhed. "But I mean, is it permanent? She's mortal now; what happens when Zeus turns her back? I'm assuming no more petrification, right?"

"Let's all try and survive long enough to find out," Will suggested, slipping off a double ring on his left hand and tossing it into the air. When it came down again, it had turned into his bow and quiver.

The door boomed. Athena teetered on the brink of falling over before crashing back into position hard enough to mash the doorframe to splinters on impact.

"On a scale of 1 to we're all going to die…" Rachel began, coiling a strand of hair around her finger as she spoke, feeling it yanking at the roots.

"Actually, I've never met a victim of Medusa in the Underworld," Nico said. "I know she hasn't been around for a few years but you think I'd have met _someone_. My guess is that when she petrifies you your soul gets trapped as well so you don't _technically_ die. You're just… stuck. Forever."

Rachel gave him a long, hard stare and then turned to Will. "Of all the people in all the world you could have chosen to date…"

The doorframe cracked. The deadbolt screeched. Athena finally toppled over, crashing to the floor. When the door burst open, Medusa filled the doorway, her hair alive with hissing, rattling serpents.

"Die Athena, die!" she screamed, storming into the room and brandishing her claws. Her eyes hunted through the room; the snakes in her hair tasted the air in anticipation. She snarled, spinning on the spot, taking in the four moving occupants of the room who were all avoiding her gaze. "Where is Athena? I could smell her as mile away!"

"I think you're standing on her," Nico said to the air above Medusa's head.

Medusa looked down. She had indeed trampled on Athena in her haste through the door. "Oh. That was Athena?" She paused, looking down at the statue at her feet. "She's… smaller than I remember. I did this?"

Nico screwed up his face; Will stepped in front of the barrage of sarcasm that was about to be unleashed. There were a lot of things Nico was good at; defusing standoff situations was not one of them. "Yes, Medusa. You've got your revenge on the one who turned you into a gorgon in the first place."

"And that's why my enemies tremble before me!"

"And we're all trembling," Will said to Medusa's feet. "But you've had your revenge now, so…"

"Not so fast! I'm also here to kill Percy Jackson! The boy who put my head in a box!"

Nico slapped a hand to his face. "Will, I love you but I don't love this nonsense where you try and pretend monsters are reasonable."

Medusa charged forwards towards Percy, her claws flashing in the light. Percy jumped backwards into the kitchen table, using it for leverage to jump and snap a two-footed kick to Medusa's chest. Medusa staggered away, whirling just in time to deflect Nico's sword off her talons.

Nico lunged in with a stab but went wide in his determination not to look at her. Medusa sidestepped neatly and backhanded Nico away like a bug. The blow lifted him off his feet, sending him crashing through the end table by the door with the big bowl on top where Percy and Annabeth kept their keys. The table splintered underneath him, the bowl crunching to oblivion under his weight.

Medusa charged across the kitchen back towards Percy, who slammed open the fridge door in her face, leaving a gorgon-shaped dent in the metal. While Medusa was howling with her face in her hands, Will fired an arrow at her throat. It lodged halfway through her scaly arm, stopping just short of her neck.

Medusa screeched and dropped her arms, storming across the apartment in a seething rage towards Will. Will squinted at the ceiling above Medusa's head and fired another arrow. It stuck, quivering, and then exploded, sending a chunk of plaster the size of a paving slab down on Medusa's head.

Percy leapt in as Medusa swayed on the spot, but she got her talons up at the last minute and intercepted Riptide heading for her neck. Percy averted his eyes almost too late, feeling his limbs momentarily slow like they were moving through molasses. It was the chance Medusa needed to stab him through the shoulder with her talons.

Percy's fingers spasmed and he dropped Riptide, which turned back into a pen and rolled under the couch. He stumbled backwards, probing the wound on his shoulder. Already blood was pouring past his elbow and he'd lost feeling in three of his fingers.

Nico disentangled himself from the remains of the table and ran across the apartment, vaulting the couch and jumping back into the midst of the battle. He swung his sword at Medusa, trying to guess where she'd move be checking out her feet, but without being able to see her directly his blade was getting nowhere near where it needed to be.

With a compact mirror in one hand and a lamp in the other, Rachel snuck up behind Medusa and smashed the lamp over her head. Medusa whirled to face her and Rachel shrieked at the reflection she saw in the mirror, the gorgon's eyes blazing at her even through the reflection.

The snakes of Medusa's head shook off the remains of glass and ceramic and flared out from Medusa's head in a corona, spitting venom. Rachel blanched and looked around for her next weapon. Seeing nothing to hand she chucked the compact mirror like a frisbee. It nailed Medusa in the eye, eliciting a howl of pained rage.

"All who support Athena and what she did to me will die! All friends of Percy Jackson will perish!" Medusa screeched, a hand over one eye in pain.

"What if we're ambivalent about what Athena did and Percy is really only an acquaintance?" Nico asked, getting his answer when Medusa snarled and turned on him, her talons a deadly blender.

"Nico, catch!" Percy yelled, emulating Rachel's earlier toss and throwing a pan lid across the room frisbee-style.

Nico snatched it out of the air and stared into it, immediately being confronted with the full force of the gorgon's gaze in the warped reflection. "Whoa! Hey. Athena really did a number on you, didn't she? Never get down and dirty in one of her temples. Message received."

Medusa redoubled her attack, pressing Nico back against the wall by the door. He ducked under a punch that would have taken his head off; it left Medusa's talons lodged in the drywall.

"How many more times? Don't antagonise the monsters!" Will yelled at Nico in exasperation, choosing a particular arrow from his quiver. "Cover your eyes!" He notched the arrow with his eyes screwed tight shut and aimed at Medusa's feet. It thudded into the floorboards with a screech of protesting wood. A boom and a blinding white light seared through the room, blowing away every shadow like gossamer cobwebs.

Even with his arm over his face Nico was temporarily dazzled by the blast but he recovered quicker than Medusa, who was howling and clawing at her eyes. Nico stepped forward, both hands on his sword, and sliced Medusa's head clean off.

Medusa's body fell to its knees and crumbled to dust on impact. Her head rolled over the rug, leaving a trail of green blood in his wake.

Nico wrinkled his nose. "Yeah, I am not picking that up."

Rachel rolled her eyes and flipped up the corner of the rug with her sneaker, using it to cover the head. "Baby. Anyway, this is your head now. It's your spoil of battle or whatever. Own it."

Will was already across the apartment probing the wound in Percy's shoulder, the quiver and bow back on his fingers as rings. "That thing is not coming home with us," he said flatly, repositioning Percy so the light was better.

"It's just a shoulder wound," Percy said. He tried to shrug it off and was immediately met with white hot fire down his wounded arm f or his trouble. "I'll be fine."

"There's no such thing as 'just a shoulder wound'," Will grunted. He was frowning hard at the hole in Percy's arm. "I wish movies would stop having people get shot in the shoulder and it be this tiny inconvenience. I can't tell without an x-ray or a scan but you've probably done serious damage to the muscles and nerves. And the blood looks like she nicked your subclavian artery. If you weren't a demigod I'd be worried you wouldn't ever regain full use or feeling in this arm."

"But I am," Percy said wearily, chewing on the ambrosia Will was practically forcing down his throat."

"Yeah, and there's a monster head wrapped in the rug to prove it," Nico said, sheathing his sword. He looked down at his feet and winced. "Speaking of decapitated issues…" He bent over and hefted Athena's disembodied head up into his arms. It had snapped at the neck when it toppled over. "How the fuck are we going to explain this to Zeus?"


	24. October II

Percy stuck his head around the doorframe. Annabeth sat on the bed, slapping at pages of a magazine to turn them, her eyes barely moving across the text. Golden sunlight slanted in through the window, which showed a vista down the slopes of Olympus. White buildings gleamed in the sun. Annabeth's hair haloed the light; the tilt and timbre of it softened her features and made her glow.

"Hey," Percy said, knocking on the open door.

Annabeth looked up from her magazine; it slid off her lap and splatted to the floor. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, wincing at the twinge in her lower back as she rose. "Hey! You didn't say you were coming." She crossed the room and folded herself into Percy's arms, inhaling the scent from his shirt.

"Yeah. I know. We… had a small problem."

Annabeth lurched away from Percy suddenly, looking him dead in the eye. "Don't do this to me. I know what your small problems are like. What is it? Is it Tartarus?"

Percy sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "No. It's been all quiet on that front. We had a monster situation."

Annabeth gave a long exhale through her nose and bumped down onto the edge of her bed. "Of course. What now?"

"Medusa," Percy said, wincing when Annabeth looked up sharply and pierced him with a stare.

"What?! Are you kidding me? Is everyone okay?"

"Everyone's fine. Apart from your mom. She… kind of got the brunt of it."

Annabeth pinched the bridge of her nose, massaging between her eyes. "Are you telling me my mom is made of stone right now?"

"Well… a little."

"A little?! Percy, this isn't a fine line thing. She's either a statue or she's not."

"Zeus is working on it," Percy said quickly. "He thinks it will be fine. I mean, she's a goddess just… not right now, technically."

Percy could see the cogs in Annabeth's brain whirring. "How do you even de-petrify someone?" she asked, tilting her head to one side. "Has that even been done before?"

"Well, Hephaestus was all for sinking his axe into her back to try and crack her out of it but I don't think it's going to come to that. They'll figure it out. They've already got her head back on."

"She's HEADLESS?" Annabeth yelped, jumping to her feet. "My mother is _headless?!_ And you didn't think to lead with that?"

"Not anymore!" Percy said hurriedly, holding up his hands. "Hephaestus had some Gorilla Glue."

"Gorilla Glue," Annabeth said faintly, burying her head in her hands. "Oh gods. You realise my mother is one of the most sculpted goddesses in all of history and they've stuck the original back together with freaking Gorilla Glue?!"

Percy waved his hand. "We're talking a minor neck crick issue here at a worst. That's what I was promised."

"How did this even happen? I thought you were supposed to be protecting her. She's got no powers, Percy. Nothing. Zeus sent her down totally stripped of anything remotely useful."

"Hey, I tried. Believe me, I tried. But Medusa is Medusa," Percy said, shrugging. "Not a whole lot I can do about her. And for the record, I absolutely did not knock her head off. I'm all for my mother-in-law's head remaining firmly attached."

"Fine, then run me through it. Medusa shows up, petrifies my mom and then… what? Her head just spontaneously drops off?"

"Uh…"

"Percy?"

"It was an accident, okay? Can't we just leave it at that?"

"How do you accidentally decapitate a goddess?" Annabeth demanded, her eyebrows shooting towards her hairline.

"Well… Nico, he–"

"Ah, of course. Nico had to be behind this, didn't he?"

"Hey!" protested a voice from outside the door. Nico rounded the doorframe, scowling at Percy. "First of all, Perce, _traitor_. I can't believe you ratted me out. Secondly, don't imply that I'm somehow this epicentre of chaos and destruction. I don't always break shit, you know."

"Apart from my mom's _head_?"

"Technically, that was Medusa. And maybe I didn't exactly help the situation, but I definitely did not knock her head off, either. This is one hundred percent not my fault."

Annabeth took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "Fine," she said on the exhale, fighting to keep her voice level. "Fine. Let's just go with this not being your fault. Why are you lurking in the corridor, anyway?"

"I figured you and Percy would want to suck face and I didn't want to lose my lunch," Nico said with a shrug, throwing himself onto Annabeth's bed and immediately attacking the bowl of grapes on the nightstand. "Plus, someone had to heft your mom across town into the elevator downstairs. I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have fit in a cab."

"We also come with gifts," Will said, appearing in the doorway as well. He had a stack of magazines in his arms. "The latest editions from Rachel."

Annabeth held out her arms and practically snatched the magazines from Will when he walked towards her to hand them over. "Oh thank the gods," she said, hugging them to her chest. "I've read the last ones three times each. I'm losing my freaking mind here."

"That bad, huh?" Will asked with a sympathetic grimace.

"I've been teleshopping on Hephaestus TV," Annabeth ground out, brandishing her wrist, which was encircled by a jingling bronze charm bracelet. "'Get your celestial bronze charm bracelet today, now with added charm!'"

"Makes sense," Nico said, tossing a grape into the air and catching it in his mouth. "You need all the added charm you can get."

Annabeth smiled and plucked one of the charms off her bracelet, squeezing it in her fist. "Nico, react to that statement the way I would," she said.

Nico blinked, then smacked himself upside the head. "Ow! Hey, what the hell?"

Annabeth opened her fist; the charm had dissolved into dust, which blew away in the breeze from the window. "It's a charm speak bracelet," Annabeth explained, her smile widening. "Each charm gives the wearer the ability to make one command. Cool, huh?"

Nico rubbed the back of his head. "Not cool. So not cool."

"And this is from Hephaestus TV, you say?" Will asked. "Will they expedite shipping?"

Nico narrowed his eyes. "This is bullying. I am being bullied." He pointed to Will. "And don't you dare order one of those."

"Free shipping _and_ handling to anyone in the Greater Olympus area," Annabeth told Will. "Although seriously, I don't recommend starting to shop on there. It's like you're buying crack or something. You just have to keep going back for more."

"Should I be worried about your credit rating?" Percy asked.

"Hey, my money my rules," Annabeth said, spilling the magazines onto the bed. "Besides, we absolutely needed the snake-proof bassinet I just bought. Plus, it comes with a homing beacon to attract friendly wolves to take care of the baby in case you accidentally leave it in the wilderness."

Nico raised his hand. "Hi, so even I know that's a really strange accident to happen. Are you planning on leaving the baby in the wilderness?"

"Of course I'm not planning on it. That's why they call it an accident."

Nico took a breath to reply but thought better of it and closed his mouth instead.

Will nodded in appreciation, mouthing _smart move_ across the room to Nico.

"Have you heard anything about my dad?" Percy asked. "I still haven't heard from him. After everything, I thought he'd have been in touch by now."

Annabeth's face fell. "Percy, I'm so sorry. It completely slipped my mind. I managed to find a sea nymph the other day and it's not good news. He's been banished."

"Banished? Banished how? Have they turned him human as well?"

Annabeth shook her head. "No, I don't think so. Zeus sent him to a weather station in the Atacama Desert. He's not allowed to return until it measures a drop of rain."

Percy frowned. "But… it rains in the desert right? Even if it's not much, it has to rain."

"The Atacama is the driest non-polar desert in the world," Annabeth said, biting her lip. "Rain is measured in millimetres per decade. The weather station Zeus sent your dad to… it's never rained there in the entire time it's been set up."

"No water," Percy said, swallowing hard.

"I did some reading on it," Annabeth said. "Rainfall is blocked by two mountain ridges. That has allowed hyper-aridity to persist since the Triassic Period. That's 200 million years, making it one of the world's oldest deserts."

Percy closed his eyes, scrubbing a hand down his face. "I should never have asked him to keep a secret from Zeus. I knew it was going to end badly."

"It's not your fault, Percy," Annabeth said, stepping forward and hugging him. "Zeus is Zeus. He was always going to react one way or another. You don't need to blame yourself for what he's done." Annabeth felt Percy heave a quiet sigh in her arms and squeezed tighter for a few seconds before stepping back.

"He's going to be so weak without water," Percy said, pacing across the room and kicking out at the leg of the bed. The giant piece of furniture barely moved, but pain radiated through Percy's toes. "With Tartarus coming, don't they realise that we all need to be pulling together?" He paused, squaring his shoulders. "I'm going to talk to Zeus."

Nico's eyes widened and he vanished into the shadows under the bed, reappearing in the middle of the room with his hands held out in front of him to stop Percy in his tracks. "Whoa, hey, death wish much? That's the dumbest idea I have heard for a long time."

"He's right, Percy," Annabeth said, threading her arm through his and leading him back towards the bed. "You'll probably just make it worse."

"I've got to do something!" Percy growled, flinging out his hand. "My dad is stuck in a rainless desert for who knows how long because of something I asked him to do. That's not fair."

"I don't think fair really comes into it in these situations," Will said. "I mean, look at my dad. He was banished down to Earth just because he didn't predict an apocalypse. Predicting stuff is _hard_. That's why it's so difficult trying to recreate the Oracle for Rachel."

Percy slumped down onto the bed. "I've made such a mess of everything, haven't I?"

"Pretty sure you couldn't make a bigger mess than the rise of Tartarus even if you tried," Nico said with a shrug. "And you are spectacular at making messes, I will add. This is what it is. No good feeling sorry for yourself."

"What's that, your latest motivational poster?" Percy asked, rolling his eyes.

"He's right," Annabeth said, sitting down next to Percy and grabbing his hand.

"Who are you and what have you done with Annabeth?" Nico demanded, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"Seriously, you're right. We can't sit around feeling sorry for ourselves. We're better than that. We're going to fight and we're going to win."


	25. December I

"You want to cook Christmas lunch," Nico said, his face scrunching into a worried frown. "You. For all of us."

They were sitting at the kitchen island in Rachel's apartment drinking coffee from a machine that probably had a price tag equal to the GDP of a small country.

Rachel reached for a recipe book which she'd marked with little sticky notes and began leafing through it. She shrugged. "Sure, why not?" she asked. "I've seen people cook Christmas lunch. How hard can it be?"

"What people? Who taught you to cook Christmas lunch?"

Rachel gave a one shoulder shrug. "I don't know. Caterers?"

Nico closed his eyes and tugged his phone out of his pocket. "I'm calling Will."

"Why?"

"Because he'll know the number for Poison Control," Nico said, whizzing through his phone with his thumb.

Rachel slammed the recipe book closed, making Nico jump. "Oh ha ha ha. Hilarious. I'll have you know that I'm a very accomplished chef."

"Accomplished at what? Microwaving things? Rachel, you don't cook. That's fine. I respect that. But suddenly you want to make an entire Christmas lunch for all of us? This is going to end badly."

"Well, Annabeth is being kicked out of Olympus for the Winter Solstice because the whole mountain is sealed to all apart from gods yada yada yada so this is the only chance to all be together again before the baby's born. I want to do something special. And it's not like Annabeth is going to be cooking, is it?"

"That's because Annabeth's mother is the goddess of wisdom and has granted her enough of that wisdom to know that she can't cook, either," Nico said. "We all remember the Thanksgiving episode where we had to call the fire department."

"To be fair to Annabeth, that was only a small fire," Rachel dismissed, flapping her hand.

"Tell that to the turkey she cremated, may it rest in peace. The fire department had to carry it out of the apartment using special equipment."

"Well, I'm not planning on cooking turkey. I can do this."

"By 'this', I assume you mean do Tartarus' job for him by killing us all?"

"You are not a very supportive person, are you?"

Nico raised an eyebrow. "You seem surprised by this turn of events. Have we met?"

Rachel fingered the sticky notes trapped between the pages of the recipe book. "Look, I'm just trying to do something nice for everyone, okay? We've had a crappy few months and the Tartarus mess is still hanging over us despite everything. And if I can't help by being the Oracle, then I'm pretty useless, aren't I?"

"You're not useless," Nico said. "I mean, you can't cook but you're not useless. Haven't you got another trial with Leo and the Hecate kids to see if he can get the prophecy goggles working this time?"

Rachel sighed. "Yeah, but at this point we've been back to the drawing board like fifty times and I don't think we're ever going to get anywhere. The only way we're going to get the Oracle back is if we find May Castellan and we all know she's trapped in Tartarus somewhere, so… yeah. All I want is for us to all eat a nice lunch together and watch the eclipse. It could be the last chance at normal we get."

"Ugh, the eclipse," Nico said, shaking his head. "Don't remind me. Apollo is losing his mind. The closer it gets, the more he becomes like Artemis."

Rachel cocked her head."Wait, what? Like Artemis? His polar opposite sister? Are we talking about the same god here?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Nico said, grimacing. "Apparently this happens every solar eclipse. As the moon gets nearer to being in position to block out the sun, Apollo loses his… Apollo-ness. He dropped in on me and Will last night."

"Are you serious? What for?"

Nico blushed to the tips of his ears. "We were in the middle of… you know. And then my boyfriend's dad literally just pops into being in the corner of the room to ask if Will had ever considered celibacy."

Rachel choked on her coffee. "No way."

"Oh yeah," Nico said, his lip curling. "Talk about a mood killer." He checked the time on his phone. "I have to go. Will's shift is nearly over. But seriously, Rachel, please. For the sake of humanity. Put the cookbook down and pick up a takeout menu like a normal person?"

Rachel took a slug of her coffee and opened the cookbook again, studiously ignoring Nico as she read down the page.

Nico sighed and drained his coffee cup. "Well, that's it. We're doomed."

* * *

Rachel knocked on the door of the bunker. It smelled, as usual, like hot engine oil, smoke and tabasco. The entire place was alive with hissing, clicking, ticking, clunking and creaking as prototypes of machines ground around in the background. She had no idea why she knocked; it's not as if it would be heard over the din.

"Hi? Leo?"

"Over here!" Leo called from somewhere in the bowels of the bunker.

Rachel picked her way through the discarded detritus and piles of half-finished inventions, ducking under models hanging from the rafters and kicking aside the odd lump of twisted metal as she went.

"You're going to have to be more specific," Rachel yelled, squinting at a pile of cogs she was sure she'd already gone by once before. The paths through the bunker wound and curved just as much as any hedge maze, ending in dead ends and spitting you out back where you'd come from as if by design.

A torrent of flame shot up from somewhere near the middle of the bunker like a flare and she locked her eyes on the oily coil of smoke it left behind, eventually stumbling out into a clearing filled by Leo's workbench.

The now-familiar pair of goggles were clamped in a vice with Leo bent over them, adjusting them with a screwdriver. Behind Leo in a semicircle stood three members of the Hecate cabin, each holding a pair of crossed flaming torches and whispering a chant that sounded a constant hiss of static.

"Nearly done!" Leo said, looking up at Rachel with magnifying glasses that blew his eyes to the same proportion as a bug's in his head. He shoved the screwdriver back into his tool belt and rummaged through it, picking out a mallet before nodding to the Hecate campers. "Now!"

The chant rose to a crescendo, their voices blending into one and deepening. The torches in their hands flared with a roar that lit up the whole bunker; Rachel could feel the heat from where she was standing and blinked at the prickles it created in her face.

Leo raised the mallet high into the air and brought it down with a resounding _clang_ on the celestial bronze goggles. A green light blazed in them, making the flaming torches look like children's sparklers. Leo whooped in delight, waving the mallet in circles around his head as he danced a jig.

The torches winked out and the Hecate campers staggered. Leo reached into his tool belt and plucked out a folded square of pink plastic. He tossed it over his shoulder. It inflated into a blowup couch in midair like a giant bubblegum bubble and caught the Hecate kids as they slumped off their feet.

"And that is how it's done, baby!" Leo screamed in delight, punching the air as he shoved the magnifying glasses onto his forehead.

"I take it this is good news?" Rachel asked, tucking her hair behind her ear nervously. She'd been experimented on plenty of times with Leo's prototype goggles and many of them had, quite literally, blown up in her face.

"Yes! Did you not see that gorgeous green glow? If that's not prophecy magic I don't know what is! I will eat this mallet if these are not the real deal."

Rachel grimaced. "Want me to call my dentist? That's going to take a lot of chewing."

"Do I want you to call your dentist? Pah! Have faith, Ray."

"Again, don't call me Ray," Rachel said, stepping over to Leo and squinting at the goggles. "They don't look any different to last time."

"That's because the shell is the same. It's what's inside that's different. I've totally upgraded the prophecy matrix. They're supercooled by water from the Kassotis Spring, so they shouldn't blow up in your face anymore, plus they've got the magic of the water running over all the key components. Everything's come together, Ray. This is going to work, I'm telling you."

Rachel exhaled through her nose, tugging the lever of the vice to release the goggles. They felt heavier than usual and definitely cooler to the touch than she remembered, almost like Stygian iron rather than celestial bronze. With her free hand she plucked Leo's mallet out of his hand.

"Where are you taking that? That's my favourite mallet."

"It's to chase after you with when these explode," Rachel said, adjusting the straps. "I'm not putting up with that anymore, fair warning."

"Ye of little faith," grumbled Leo, tucking his hands under his armpits as Rachel fitted the goggles. He thought for a minute, then delved into his tool belt and pulled out a helmet from a suit of armour, tugging it on over his head.

Rachel's head snapped up and she glared at him.

"What?" Leo asked, his voice echoing inside the helmet. "The mallet is your insurance. This helmet is mine."

Rachel sighed and fitted the goggles. "Now what?" she asked. Everything in the bunker glowed green, with a particularly strong aura around the slumped Hecate kids.

Inside the helmet, Leo grinned. He stepped forward and flicked a switch on the side of the goggles. "Now you See."

Rachel snorted. "I can barely see, let alone See. I don't think this is–"

Green smoke billowed from Rachel's nose and mouth, like she was exhaling into Siberian air. The googles whirred and whined, lighting up acid green.

 _As Tartarus' army grows and toils_

 _The darkness beneath ferments and boils._

 _It aims to take an innocent's breath_

 _And resign the world to certain death._

 _Those who want to oppose his rise_

 _Must give the shadow no place to hide._

 _The daylight from the sun displaced_

 _Can in battle be replaced_

 _By a child of sun and prophecy_

 _Who'll forfeit their soul to set the world free._

Rachel gasped one, twice, and then her knees gave out beneath her.


	26. December II

"Are you sure you're okay?" Percy asked, frowning at Annabeth. She was sat cross-legged on her bed on Olympus, watching him what could only be loosely describe as 'packing' a duffle bag for her day trip down to Earth for the Winter Solstice.

"I have a headache, Percy, not a brain tumour," Annabeth said. "I'm _fine_ , for the hundredth time. It's no big deal. I'm dealing with swollen ankles, hands so fat I've had to take my rings off and I still feel like I want to be puking my guts up half the time, so I'm pretty sure I can deal with one lousy headache."

Percy gave her one last look of concern and then returned to packing the bag, tossing in clothes and toiletries haphazardly.

"You know I'm only coming down for one night, right? You seem to be packing for an expedition to the South Pole…"

Percy looked down at the bag for a second and then tugged on the zip, trying his hardest to close it. It bulged out in all directions, refusing to budge.

"Maybe an expedition to the South Pole," Percy said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head. "Sorry, I was trying to forget that you were coming back up here tomorrow. I wish you didn't have to. I've missed you."

"The apartment's a wreck, isn't it?" Annabeth asked, raising an eyebrow.

Percy squinted at Annabeth. "I've missed you?"

"Uh-huh." Annabeth crawled forward on the bed and began rearranging the bag, tossing stuff out she knew she had no use for until the zip stopped screaming when she tried to close it. "Come on. Let's go and see how many takeout boxes you've got balanced in the trashcan."

The answer was a veritable Leaning Tower of Pisa of takeout containers in the trashcan, all stacked into one another and towering out of the garbage in the kitchen. Annabeth rolled her eyes when she saw it, then wondered if takeout containers meant leftovers.

She could murder some egg rolls.

"Okay, don't look at the trash can," Percy said as he unlocked the door and lugged Annabeth's bag through.

"Trash can Jenga. I knew it," Annabeth said, smiling as she deeply breathed in the smell of home. You couldn't beat it, not even after so long on Olympus, where everything seemed to be designed to offer maximum sensory overload to mortals.

Percy steered Annabeth towards the couch, making her sit down before turning round to dump her bag in the bedroom. "I'm so glad you're home," Percy yelled, deriding he also needed to spend some time making the bed and generally straightening up the bedroom before Annabeth laid her eyes on it. "And don't think of it as trash can Jenga. Think of it more as a new and undiscovered type of architectural construction. I'm sure you'll appreciate the structural integrity. I've put a lot of effort in to that."

Annabeth shook her head and shuffled forwards on the couch to rearrange the magazines on the coffee table. She glanced towards the trash can, twisting her mouth as she looked at the tower of takeout containers stacked at least a foot from the rim of the bin. She wasn't a neat freak by any sense of the imagination, but there were some things that stressed her out and an overflowing trash can was one of them.

Heaving herself to her feet she made it two steps towards the kitchen before an epic head rush overtook her. She threw her arms out for balance but found nothing immediately available to grab onto. Black fuzziness encroached on the edges of her vision and her legs crumpled beneath her as she plunged to the rug out cold.

"Annabeth?" Percy called from the bedroom. "I said what's the bed like on Olympus? I always wondered what it would be like to sleep up there. Is the mattress like a cloud?" Percy frowned, not getting any answers to his questions, and stuck his head out of the door. His stomach dropped when he spotted one of Annabeth's legs splayed out on the floor beyond the coffee table. He ran to here side. "Annabeth!"

* * *

"The goggles _worked_?" Nico said.

"Hey, dude, you're on speaker, so a little less disbelief in your tone please," Leo said, folding his arms and scowling at the phone. "I said I'd get them working, didn't I?"

"Boys…" Rachel tried to interject with, but Nico leapt in and cut her off.

"Yes, but you also said that about your automatic breakfast machine," Nico said. "And that set fire to the cereal and melted off your eyebrows."

Leo snorted. "As if. My eyebrows are fireproof." He paused. "Jason's, however, were apparently not…"

"Well, whoever sacrificed their eyebrows to it you can't exactly hang it up in the engineering hall of fame, can you?"

"Quit it!" Rachel snapped. The Hecate campers had taken a swig of nectar and gone back to their bunks to rest up, so she'd taken over the inflatable pink sofa and was draped across it massaging the bridge of her nose. "I had a prophecy. That's what we need to focus on. is Will there?"

"Here," Will said from the other end of the phone.

"What about Annabeth and Percy?" Rachel asked.

"I'll conference them in," Leo said, picking up the phone and dialling in Percy's cell. He waited for an answer, but eventually the line rang out to Percy's voicemail. "Huh, that's weird."

"Try Annabeth," Rachel said.

Leo did with no success. "That's weird, right? Should we be worried?"

"They're probably having reunion sex," Rachel said, sitting up on the inflatable sofa with a squeak. "Maybe we should give them some time to get reconnected."

"Reunion sex?" Nico scoffed through the phone. "Annabeth is the size of a blimp. How is that even physically possible?"

The sound of Will smacking Nico upside the head echoed through the bunker. "That was mean. Maybe Rachel's right and they just need to spend some time together.

"Okay, but if we could not talk about them having sex that would be great," Nico grumbled. "I get enough nightmares as it is, thanks."

* * *

"911, what's your emergency?"

"Hi, you have to help me, please. It's my wife. She's eight months pregnant and she just collapsed. I don't know what to do."

"Okay, sir, I understand. Is she breathing?" the operator asked.

"Yes, but she's not waking up. What the hell is wrong with her? She was fine just a second ago and now she's on the floor…" Percy swallowed hard, dragging a hand backwards through his hair. His knuckles glowed white around his phone; the other hand dropped down to Annabeth, brushing hair back from her forehead.

"Sir, I'm sending an ambulance. They'll be with you as soon as possible."

Percy nodded and dropped the phone without hanging up. He crawled over to Annabeth and lifted her head into his lap, stroking her hair and repeating over and over, "Please be okay. Please be okay…"

* * *

After Olympus, even the sterile white of the hospital seemed dingy and dull. Annabeth futzed with the hospital wristband, the cannulas in the back of her hand flapping. She felt _fine_ now; what was the big deal?

"Will you stop pacing?" Annabeth demanded, fiddling with the tube forcing oxygen up her nose. She had woken up in the back of the ambulance and had been rushed through to the maternity suite to have a sonogram. The baby was perfectly fine, but they'd put her through a battery of tests anyway and laid her up in a hospital bed. "You're freaking me out. The baby is good, right? You heard what the doctor said?"

"The baby is fine but you're not," Percy said, taking his thumbnail out of his mouth to speak. "You are most definitely not. What happened back there? What if it was something to do with Tartarus?"

"I got dizzy, Percy. I'm sure it's nothing. Don't freak out because then I freak out. If Tartarus wanted to get to me I don't think he'd be casting a dizziness spell."

Percy sighed and slumped into an uncomfortable plastic hospital chair next to the bed. "Where the hell is the doctor?"

"Probably seeing to someone who crashed their car or got shot or is in way more need than me," Annabeth said.

Percy launched himself to his feet. "I'm going to get a coffee," he said, slapping his palms on his thighs. "Do you want anything?"

"Yes, drink coffee," Annabeth said. "That's exactly what you need right now. More nervous energy. Great plan."

"You're right."

"I think you'll find I usually am," said Annabeth, a pale imitation of her usual smile washing over her face. "Relax, will you?"

The door opened and the doctor stepped in consulting a chart in her hand, flipping up the pages and scanning down them to take it all in. "Ms Chase?"

"That's me."

"I'm Dr Rose," she said. "I understand you're 36 weeks along, is that right?"

"Next Tuesday," Annabeth said.

"I see," Dr Rose said, her forehead furrowing as she went back to the chart. "You've missed some key milestone appointments and scans, Ms Chase. Which doctor have you been seen under? It would be useful to have your notes. We've got some gaps in your chart here."

Annabeth winced. "Doctor?"

"Yes, your OB/GYN hasn't been able to get in touch with you for some time. I thought you might have been receiving care out of state or…?"

"We've, uh, sort of been seeing an… alternative medical practitioner," Percy said, swallowing hard as he told the lie. Technically, it was true. Between the goddess of childbearing and the god of medicine being just up the hill, Annabeth had been under excellent care.

"Alternative medicine?" Dr Rose looked up sharply from her chart, piercing Percy with a glance over her glasses. "It's your wife's first baby. If she'd been seen by a _real_ doctor they might have spotted these symptoms a lot sooner."

"Symptoms?" Annabeth set up straighter in the bed, curling her fingers into the sheets. "Something's wrong? I thought the sonogram was fine?"

"Yes, the sonogram is fine. However, we've run a lot of tests," said Dr Rose. "One thing that came back is your O2 sats are low. That's why we've got you on oxygen right now until they normalise. It's a strange question to ask a woman so late in her third trimester, but have you been mountaineering? Or been at any excessive altitude that might cause low levels of oxygen in your blood?"

Annabeth exchanged a glance with Percy and then shook her head. "I can't think of anything like that, no." Her heart thudded in her chest. She'd spent _months_ up a mountain floating above New York City. It might be the longest time a mortal had ever spent on Olympus. Now she was reaping the consequences.

Percy reached over and squeezed her hand. "What's the other thing? You said one thing that came back was about her oxygen levels. What else?"

Dr Rose slotted Annabeth's chart into the holder at the end of the bed. "Unfortunately, you have a condition called pre-eclampsia," she said. "It used to be known as toxemia. It's where the mother's blood pressure rises uncontrollably during pregnancy. Symptoms include swelling of the extremities, nausea, headaches, dizziness, fainting and, at the more severe end, seizures, bleeding in the liver…"

Annabeth's mouth dried out. "But the baby…?"

"Your baby is doing just fine for now. But pre-eclampsia is dangerous for the mother and child," said Dr Rose. "It can reduce the flow of nutrients and oxygen through the placenta. At its worst it can cause the uterus and the placenta to separate, which can harm the baby. It can also cause pre-term labour."

Annabeth squeezed Percy's hand back, tears fuzzing the edges of her vision. "Oh gods…"

"There has to be a cure," Percy said. "Something you can do?"

Dr Rose smiled sadly. "I'm afraid the cure is giving birth," she said. "Blood pressure will typically return to normal thereafter. If you were a little further along I might suggest an emergency c-section, but as it stands we can try and keep your blood pressure under control with medication and bedrest until we get to around 37 weeks. Then we'll look at our options then to see how developed baby is and whether emergency delivery is more viable."

Annabeth gave a long and loud exhale. Dr Rose was still talking but it was drowned out by the growing roar in her ears. Her baby was in danger. She had put her unborn child in danger and there was practically nothing she could do to fix it except stay in bed for the next few weeks? What did that say when she was failing in her basic duty as a mother already, before the kid was even born?

Tears pricked her eyes, quivering at the edge of her vision, before she set her jaw and dashed them away with the back of her hand. She couldn't sit here and feel sorry for herself. Not now. Not when her baby needed her more than ever.


	27. December III

They'd released Annabeth in a wheelchair into waiting taxi outside the hospital. As the taxi lurched through the streets, snagging in traffic, Annabeth picked at the hospital bracelet around her wrist. Half of her wanted to rip it off and toss it out the window, but the rest of her saw it as a humbling reminder that she was not as invincible as she had first thought. Sure, Tartarus wasn't going to come after her specifically while she was carrying the baby because that would jeopardise his master plan, but that didn't mean her body couldn't still betray her and put everything at risk anyway.

"Are you okay?" Percy asked, reaching over and grabbing her hand.

Annabeth sighed. "You're asking me that a lot lately, huh? But yeah?" she tried, entirely unconvincingly. "I don't know. I'm going to need a while to process this. I'm sick and it's risking my baby. That's a lot to take in. A lot to shoulder, you know?"

"We'll get through this," Percy said, smiling at her. "You heard what the doctor said. We can keep this under control with medication and bedrest and then they're going to look at an emergency C-section so there's minimum risk to the baby. They know what they're doing."

The hospital bracelet split on one side of the adjustable holes, leaving it hanging on by a thread. "I know what they say. That doesn't mean it's going to be smooth sailing. Our baby is going to have to be delivered premature because my body can't…" Her throat tightened and she swallowed, staring out at the lanes of traffic grinding onwards.

"This isn't your fault. This isn't anyone's fault. It's just the way it is," Percy said.

"And what about Tartarus? We've just bumped his plan up practically a month. He's going to be coming after us a lot sooner now. Are we ready for that?"

"When we're finished with him, Tartarus is going to wish he never crawled out of Hades," Percy growled. "And he won't be coming back."

* * *

Rachel had set up her guest room for Annabeth. She was covered in flour and had a smudge of something dark on her cheek when she greeted them. Her forehead was rumpled but she hugged Annabeth hard as soon as she was over the threshold. "Thank the gods they released you. That's a good sign right?" she asked, leading Annabeth and Percy towards the guest room.

"Yes and no," Annabeth said with a tired shrug. "They can't do much for me in the hospital so they don't see why I can't come home, but it's still not great news." She clambered onto the bed and sank into the mattress, her back grumbling at her as her spine stretched out.

"Well, that's why I made the bed up for you," Rachel said. "And I'm making lunch, so you just lie yourself down there and get ready for a feast." She spun around and headed back towards the kitchen.

Percy trailed after her. "You're still cooking?" he said, his eyes roving over Rachel's floury visage and the bulging grocery bags set up in the kitchen.

"Of course!" Rachel chirped. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"I thought Nico was going to try and talk some sense into you," Percy said. "You and cooking… it's never really been a match made on Olympus, has it?"

Rachel sniffed and cracked an egg on the side of a bowl, spattering egg white everywhere. The yolk slicked down the wrong side of the glass; shell seemed to be the only part of the egg that actually made its way into the bowl. "I'm making lunch," Rachel repeated, sticking her fingers into the bowl to try and rescue the fragments of eggshell. "Just watch me."

Nico and Will arrived just before the eclipse was due. Rachel's guest room had a skylight, so Annabeth was set up on the bed looking up with her eclipse glasses. The rest of them were lounging around the main apartment, apart from Rachel, who was dodging between kitchen jobs frenetically.

Nico sat on one of the barstools in the kitchen, swiping cake mix out of a bowl with his fingers. Will stood behind him with his arms draped over Nico's shoulders, slouching so that he could rest his chin on Nico's head. Occasionally, Nico would reach up and feed Will some of the mix.

Percy sat in an armchair, scrolling through his phone. "Guys, what's with the million missed calls, by the way?"

Will untangled himself from Nico; Nico set the bowl down on the counter. Even Rachel stopped with the frantic alternate stirring and cursing she was making over a pot on the stove.

Percy glanced up. His face fell. "Oh gods. What now?"

"I thought you were going to tell him?" Nico said to Rachel.

"It's about _you_ ," Rachel said. "I thought you were going to tell him."

"It's not about Will," Nico said automatically, his face darkening.

Will sighed. "Nico…" he started, scrubbing a hand down his face.

"I don't care; I don't want to hear it," Nico said.

Percy stood up. "Somebody tell me. I don't care who it is. Just tell me what's going on."

"Leo's prophecy goggles worked," Rachel said, her fingers tightening around the spoon she still held in her hand. "I had another prophecy."

Percy swallowed and felt his knees weaken, but instead of giving in and falling back into the chair he'd risen from he began pacing the apartment instead with his head bowed. The last prophecy they'd had was a dire warning and, by the way his friends were reacting to this one, it wasn't much better this time around.

"There's a prophecy about forfeiting a soul," Rachel said quietly, glancing at Will and Nico but seeing nothing but hostility in Nico's eyes.

 _"As Tartarus' army grows and toils_

 _The darkness beneath ferments and boils._

 _It aims to take an innocent's breath_

 _And resign the world to certain death._

 _Those who want to oppose his rise_

 _Must give the shadow no place to hide._

 _The daylight from the sun displaced_

 _Can in battle be replaced_

 _By a child of sun and prophecy_

 _Who'll forfeit their soul to set the world free."_

"So there's a way to stop Tartarus?" Percy asked. "This child of sun and prophecy can replace the lost daylight and that's it, Tartarus is toast?"

"Sure, if you want to be responsible for murdering someone to make it happen," Nico muttered, shoving the bowl of cake mix further away from him.

"Tartarus needs to be stopped," Will said. "People are going to die in this battle either way, Nico. You could die. Surely it's better that one person dies rather than hundreds?"

Nico said nothing but continued to look mutinous, glaring at the cake mix so hard Will was sure it was going to start curdling under the force of it.

"We'll figure it out," Will said quietly. "We're going to have to."

* * *

The howling began just after the moon fully eclipsed the sun. The air had taken on a greenish quality, a fake twilight, and then the howling started. The moaning, screeching, keening noise wound through the city's streets, bouncing off the concrete and booming through alleyways.

It sounded like someone had taken the monkey house from the zoo, given them all rabies and then thrown the lot into an industrial blender.

"You guys, what the hell is that howling noise?" Annabeth was stood in the doorway to Rachel's guest bedroom in her pyjamas. Her eclipse glasses were perched on top of her head; she'd been watching the moon slide across the sun from the skylight above the bed.

"Whoa, hey, why are you on your feet?" Percy said, scrambling to his feet and almost tripping over the couch as he threw himself over the back of it towards her. "You heard what the doctor said. Bed rest. Lots and lots of bed rest."

"Yeah, well, bed rest doesn't actually mean–"

"Yeah it does," Will said, getting to his feet as well. "I heard what the doctors said. You need to stay off your feet for the next four weeks to avoid premature…" The colour dropped out of his face. "Oh gods."

Percy looked from Annabeth to Will and back to Annabeth again. Will had gone the colour of congealed oatmeal. Annabeth had crossed her arms over her chest but there wasn't much conviction in her expression – she knew Will was right – so he decided to tackle the simplest issue first.

"If the doctor says it _and_ Will says it, I'm taking it as gospel," Percy said, grabbing Annabeth by the elbow and steering her back towards her room. "Come on, back to bed."

"Will didn't said _anything_ ," Annabeth grumbled, although she let herself be walked back to the bed. "He just clammed up in the middle of the sentence. And no one has answered my question. What the hell is that howling noise?"

"Probably just the animals in Central Park Zoo," Percy said with a shrug. "Remember, you told me that animals act weirdly around eclipses. Or maybe we saw a documentary on it."

"Yes, but I didn't think you were actually paying attention," Annabeth said, giving Percy a sharply curious look. "Why do you always pretend that documentaries are such a snoozefest if you actually learn from them after all?" She sat down on the bed and drew her bare feet up, shoving them under the comforter.

"Well, you know. Hidden depths," Percy said, trying to ignore the loud whispering from behind him as Nico laid into Will, trying to drag whatever horror Will had noted out of him.

"That is not a happy face," Nico hissed, leading Will off in the opposite direction Percy had taken Annabeth. "Remember we talked about no stress for Annabeth? This is not a no stress face. This is a very stressful face. If I'm finding it stressful, then Annabeth must be–"

"The eclipse," Will said, shaking off Nico and crossing to the window to look out at the world. The whole city seemed to have gone silent, staring up as one to witness the moon blotting out the sun. "My dad is the god of prophecy. And the god of the sun. And yesterday he was having his usual eclipse-related meltdown and all this time…"

"Can we nix the hushed whispering, guys?" Percy said, emerging from the bedroom looking harangued and drawing a hand across his throat. "Annabeth has high blood pressure. She's hasn't gone deaf."

"This is it," Will said, turning to Percy. "The eclipse. It's what the prophecy was talking about. I think… we were too set on pinning this on Nyx. We needed to go back and look at my dad and aunt Artemis again. And now… too late." By now he had wound a fist into the curtain and was balling it so tightly that the curtain hooks above him started to give way, pinging white plastic off around the room.

"So you're saying…?" Rachel asked, her mouth dry.

"The prophecy has started."

Percy jammed hand backwards through his hair and glanced over his shoulder at the room Annabeth was resting it. "Oh gods. A day of night. Below darkness deep. We should have listened to you back in May, Will. I'm sorry."

"It would have happened anyway, whether or not we saw it coming," Rachel said. "This is no one's fault. We're just going to have to… adapt."

Percy went back across the apartment and into Annabeth's room. Rachel trailed after him, but jumped when Will gave a sudden yelp and wrenched half the drape free from its moorings. She turned to admonish him but was met with the sight of three Scythian dracanae in her kitchen. Shoving Percy hard to push him over the threshold, she slammed the bedroom door behind her and pushed her back against it.

Percy looked at her like she'd gone insane, but she snatched a remote off the dresser and hit play. Loud Swedish thrash metal blared from recessed speakers hidden around the room.

Annabeth clapped her hands over her ears. "Okay, this is officially worse than the howling," she yelled over the music.

"Is it? Because I don't recall howling animals having as many number one hits as this group," Rachel yelled back, nodding her head up and down with her face arranged into a maniac's rictus. "Besides, I think I read something about music being soothing for babies. So I thought we'd have some nice music to watch the eclipse with."

"When they're talking about playing music for babies they're usually talking about Mozart or Beethoven," Annabeth said, her face contorted into a frown. "I don't think this is quite what they meant."

"Well, maybe that's because they've never tried it! I find this very soothing when I'm painting. Percy, could I borrow you for a minute?" Rachel grabbed Percy's sleeve and dragged him over to the door, waving at Annabeth over her shoulder as she carefully positioned them to they were practically speaking to the wood.

"Rachel, have you finally lost your–"

"There are three dracanae in the kitchen," Rachel hissed out of the corner of her mouth, turning back to Annabeth and smiling.

The colour blanched from Percy's face and he nodded, taking the remote off Rachel and increasing the volume just as a particularly aggressive drum solo sent bass throbbing through his torso.

"I've got Annabeth," Percy said. "But if she finds out about this we are not looking at calm and bedrest."

"No freaking kidding."

"It's fine. We'll just… act normal."

Outside, Nico yelled, "Motherf–". The last half of the word was truncated by an ominous crunch.

Annabeth whipped off her eclipse glasses. "What was that?"

"Nothing to worry about I'm sure," Rachel said, her hand sliding to the doorknob. "But I'll just… go… check…" She opened the door and slipped out and immediately felt the wind of a flying scalpel blaze past her nose. If she hadn't picked the zit on the end of her nose that morning, she was fairly sure the scalpel would have taken the zit with it.

Rachel yelped, whipping her head around to find the scalpel lodging in a dracaena's neck. She exploded into dust, giving Will enough time to bend down and extract Nico from the ruins of the coffee table.

"Did you just fling a scalpel across my apartment?" Rachel hissed at Will, rubbing her nose protectively. "You almost decapitated me!"

"I don't think you'd lose your head from a scalpel," Nico said, slipping on one of the rumpled magazines underfoot and nearly falling back on his ass, "although the arterial spray from your carotid could have been quite impressive."

Rachel was about to snarl back an answer when she had to duck under a roundhouse from a bronze leg. She rolled under the kick and into the kitchen, her back slamming against the island breakfast bar. The dracaena whipped around just as Rachel was fumbling for one of the knives in the butcher's block on the island, but Nico jumped in first and ran the dracaena through with his sword.

Rachel stood up, finally extracting the biggest, longest knife her kitchen had in its arsenal and gripping it in her fist. "Okay… what now?"

"Nico, down!" Will yelled. A speargun exploded on one side of the apartment, its barbed tip whistling through the air towards Nico. Nico jumped back but not quickly enough; Will flung out his hand and the spear hovered, suspended just before it would have run through Nico's left flank.

Will and the tellkhine who had fired it gaped at it briefly before Will flicked his wrist, sending the spear hurtling back across the apartment to nail the telkhine in the heart.

"What the hell did you just do?" Nico demanded, patting himself down to make sure there were no perforations in his body he had missed.

"I think… I think I can control projectiles?" Will tried, his face flushing bright red as Rachel and Nico stared at him. "Maybe this is the next step up from archery?"

"I don't care what it was. It was freaking awesome."

"Speaking of archery…" Will said, taking off his double ring and tossing it in the air to reveal his bow and quiver. "That's better."

Three more telkhines appeared in place of the one Will had killed. Will notched his bow and fired an arrow, but another dracaena appeared and kicked the arrow to one side. The point sparked off her bronze leg but did no harm.

Another speargun erupted, this time aiming towards Rachel, but Will loosed another arrow and knocked it off course. It crunched through the front of one of the kitchen cabinets, splitting it to matchwood and sending crockery raining down onto the counter.

"Could we do this quieter?" Rachel hissed. "Annabeth is right next door."

"Yeah guys," Nico chided, running up the back of an armchair and using the height to stab the dracaena downwards through the chest. "Could you be a bit more _subtle_ as you try to murder us?" He landed catlike on the floor and spun, slashing the flippers out from underneath a telkhine. Its speargun went off and embedded itself in the ceiling, hissing dust on Nico's head as he dispatched the telkhine who fired it.

"Was that a crash?" Annabeth yelled over the death metal, cocking her head. "What the hell is going on out there?"

"Nothing," Percy said, his fingers tightening around the pen form of Riptide in his pocket. He walked over to the bed and pulled the covers up over Annabeth, tucking them in. "I think Rachel's just… moving furniture. Improving the feng shui of the place to make for a calmer baby."

Someone gave a blood curdling yell. Another crash shook the floor beneath them.

"Moving furniture," Annabeth repeated, cocking an eyebrow.

Percy thought for a beat. "While throat singing," he added.

The dividing wall between them and the rest of the apartment trembled, knocking a painting off the wall. The glass exploded across the carpet.

"You know, Rachel's furniture is heavy," Percy said. "I'm just going to… remind them to lift with their knees."

"Percy," Annabeth said, glaring at him. She pointed her eclipse glasses at him so hard he felt them poking at his chest despite being across the room. "What the hell is going on?"

"Nothing you need to worry about," Percy said, reaching backwards for the doorknob. "Calming thoughts. Bed rest. Remember?"

"I'm calm," Annabeth said, showing Percy all of her teeth. "I'm totally calmly thinking about killing you and reading the answer in your _entrails_."

"As long as it's in a soothing way," Percy said, flashing Annabeth a thumbs up and leaving the room.

"Percy!"

The apartment was crawling with monsters. The front of Nico's shirt was in ribbons with a slash across his abdomen freely oozing blood over his naval. There was a Will-shaped dent in the drywall separating the bedroom from the rest of the apartment. Someone had crashed over the island breakfast bar, taking everything on the top with them.

Rachel plunged her knife into a telkhine's neck. Will's hands were blurs as he notched and fired arrows, but his quiver was practically empty. Nico was trying to hold his stomach together with one hand and fend of an attack from a dracaena with the other.

Percy jumped into the fray, whirling to obliterate the monsters attacking Nico first as he looked the most vulnerable.

"Thanks," Nico panted, shoving sweat-damp hair off his face. "How's Annabeth?"

"Not stupid," Percy gritted out. "Have these guys never heard of keeping it down?"

"That's exactly what I said," Nico said, pausing to examine his stomach. His hand was slick with blood.

"How are you holding up? That looks bad."

"Still got my intestines," Nico said with a shrug. "Close thing."

Will soared clean across the room and obliterated a bookcase, snapping each shelf in half as he crashed to the floor. Books clattered to the floor around him. His bow spun across then carpet and was immediately snapped underfoot in the melee.

Rachel squeaked as a dracaena grabbed the hand she was holding the knife in and started turning it back towards her throat. "Little help?"

Percy jumped into action, Riptide swirling in golden arcs through the air as he dispatched monsters. He sliced the dracaena threatening Rachel, then spun and cut a spear in half heading for his neck.

"Nico, get Annabeth out of here! There are too many of them. Take her to Camp."

"I can't leave you."

"If they get to her we're toast," Percy grunted, stabbing a telkhine through the heart. "GO!"

Nico hesitated for a split second before darting across the apartment and diving into the bedroom door. He turned the handle at the last second, barrelling through and slamming it behind him.

Annabeth was on her feet in the middle of the room, making her way towards the door. "Nico? What the hell is happening? I swear to the gods if you don't tell me I am going to–"

"You're going to hate me for this," Nico said, grabbing Annabeth's arm. "But we gotta go." And they vanished.


	28. December IV

The apartment went deathly silent suddenly, broken only by Will, Rachel and Percy panting. They looked around, taking stock. All of them were walking, but none of them had escaped unscathed. Will was doubled over, clutching at his ribs from his flying lesson into the bookcase. Every breath felt like a knife to the lungs. There was a ringing in his ears that told him he probably had a concussion. Broken ribs were pretty much a given at this point.

Rachel had a freely-bleeding welt on her cheekbone that Will was itching to X-ray to check for a fracture. It would need stitches at least, and her eye was already swelling closed. There was bruises around her throat and puncture marks where talons had entered oozing yellow pus. She was still clutching her kitchen knife to her chest, looking like another monster was going to pop out of the woodwork any second.

Percy was looking around too, snorting blood back up his nose and cuffing the remnants on the back of his hand. He had cuts and scratches peppering his forearms; his shirt was torn and there was a gash above his left eye.

"What the hell happened?" Rachel demanded, swallowing and wincing as it made her throat throb.

"We got Annabeth out of the way," Percy answered, capping Riptide and turning it back into a pen. "They know the prophecy is starting just as much as we do now. It's her they're looking for."

"Is she going to be safe at Camp?" Will asked. Sure the place had its protective wards and Thalia's pine tree, not to mention an actual dragon guarding it, but how long would all that last in the face of an ongoing onslaught from the minions of the King of Hell?

"Maybe," Percy said, but he didn't sound convinced. "If she can have the baby there, and soon, then maybe..." He trailed off, realising he had repeated the word maybe twice and not liking how that sounded. Maybe was a lot to gamble the lives of his wife and children on.

Nico jumped out of the shadows in the corner of the room, patting himself down. "Oh good. I gave her the slip."

"Annabeth?" Percy asked, already knowing the answer.

"Yeah. Your wife? Pretty pissed. At me, by the way, which is so not fair. I did only what I was ordered."

"At least she's safe," Percy said.

"For now," Nico reminded them darkly. "How long can Camp really hold out with the full weight of Tartarus against it? It's been depleted since the attacks that killed Malcolm. And something tells me the gods aren't going to unlock Olympus and come down to save us this time. We're on our own."

The weight of that settled on Percy and his mouth pinched to a thin line. "We do what we have to," he said. "We give it everything we've got. I'm going to Camp. We can set up a command base there. I'll pick up as many people as I can as I go. Rachel, you get the goggles working again. Any insight you can give us could make the biggest difference. Will, I'm assuming you can patch Nico up?"

"I'm fine," Nico said automatically, but his stomach was still bleeding, he was even paler than usual and nothing could hide the strain in his voice.

"You're not," Will said. "We're going back to ours. Then we'll meet you at Camp."

Nico opened his mouth to protest but Will cut him off with a single look. Nico sighed and tilted his head in agreement, crossing the apartment to take Will's hand. "Good luck," he told Percy. "I'll be there as soon as I can, okay?"

"Go," Percy said. "I'll be fine."

Shadows coiled around Nico and Will but, just before they disappeared, they both saw Percy's face fall.

* * *

Nico hissed as Will applied nectar to his wound. Why the hell did a godly drink sting so much on contact? Oh, right. Because if Will went a bit nectar-crazy, Nico would light up like a bonfire.

Being a demigod, boys and girls. A real hoot.

Nico was laid back on the couch, with Will kneeling in front of him scowling at the bleeding, as if that could make it clot. The blood had slowed since the application of nectar, but Will wasn't having any luck with healing prayers thanks, he guessed, to the eclipse and his father's recent lunacy.

"Sorry," Will said, grimacing. His purple surgical gloves were slick with blood. He'd packed the wound with gauze, trying to get the bleeding to stop, but even with the nectar it didn't seem to want to heal. "They really did a number on you, huh?"

Nico picked at the corner of some gauze and took a look down at his stomach. The edges of the gash had healed closed into pink scar tissue, but the middle, where it was deepest, continued to malignantly bubble blood each time he drew a breath. Will smacked his hand away, pressing the gauze back into place.

"Looks like it," Nico said, chewing on a square of ambrosia. Either Will had turned the thermostat up – there were beads of sweat forming on his forehead and matting his hair – or he was dangerously close to the threshold of spontaneous human combustion.

Will looked up and paled, the opposite of the rosy flush on Nico's cheeks. "Okay, that's it. No more ambrosia and nectar. I'm going to have to stitch this."

" _Stitches_?" Nico groaned, swallowing his ambrosia. "I haven't had stitches in–"

"Sixteen months," Will supplied, snapping off his gloves so he could rummage around in the first aid chest without getting blood all over the supplies. "We were heading for a record for a while there."

Nico sighed and sank back further into the couch cushions as Will prepared a syringe of lidocaine and a surgical needle and thread. "Do you do any work at the hospital or do you just steal supplies?"

"A little from column A, a lot from column B," Will admitted, tapping the syringe. He set it down on the coffee table next to him to get some fresh gloves on. "Ready?"

"Not like I have a choice," Nico muttered, taking off the tattered remnants of his shirt as Will removed the gauze to get at the wound.

"Not if you want to keep your guts where they belong."

"Guts," Nico said, trying the word out in his mouth. He deposited the shirt on the couch cushion next to him. "Is that a medical term, doctor?"

Will looked up, about to insert the needle. "You realise I'm holding a syringe to your stomach down here, right?"

"You're going to poke me with it anyway," Nico said, rolling his eyes.

Will's nostrils flared but he didn't say anything. He started working as soon as the anaesthetic took effect, occasionally tutting to himself as he did so.

"Are we really not going to talk about the elephant in the room?" Nico asked suddenly, causing Will to nearly miss tying off a stitch.

"You better not be talking about Annabeth," Will warned. "She'll squish you like a bug."

"Not Annabeth. Please. I have _some_ self-preservation instinct."

Will glanced up, his head cocked to one side. "Really? You do?"

"Shush," Nico said. "You know what I'm talking about. That prophecy Rachel had. The one that said a child of sun and prophecy was going to sacrifice himself to save the world by replacing the stolen light."

"Prophecies are riddles," Will said with a shrug, although he wouldn't meet Nico's eyes. "It took us long enough to figure out the last one, right?"

"Will–"

"Nico." Again there was warning in his voice, but there was none of the playfulness from before. Will meant business this time and his face said it all.

"I'm going to talk to you about this whether you like it or not," Nico said, dark eyes on fire. "The person in the prophecy is you. I've never seen any other child of Apollo do what you did on Olympus. You went freaking supernova on my dad's ass. Who else is this prophecy going to be about?"

"I was pissed off," Will replied. "It's not like I make a habit of doing it. Don't you think if I could I would have done it earlier in the apartment to save you getting all bloody on me? I don't even know if I can do it again. It could be a one-time thing."

"It's not," Nico said, shaking his head. "You stopped a speargun today. You've never been able to do that before, either. But you did it. You're getting more powerful."

"Yeah, I did that to save your ass. The only two times that's ever happened is when you've been in serious danger. Or I thought you were in serious danger."

"That's the _point_ ," Nico said. "My ass need saving right now. Our collective asses need a huge hail Mary pass and the only person in the frame to do that is you."

"Fine. So I'll do it."

"You're going to _die_ , Will. The prophecy was pretty clear on that part."

Will stuck his tongue in his cheek and said nothing, leaving the needle and thread dangling from Nico's stomach.

"Look, Will–"

"No, Nico, you don't get to say look Will and have everything turn out okay. People are going to die if we don't stop Tartarus. Hundreds or thousands of innocent people are going to die, including everyone we know and love. Including your _godchild_. What do you want me to do here? Sit on the sidelines, make JiffyPop in the nuclear blast Tartarus is going to unleash on the world?"

"I don't want you to die." The words hung heavily in the air. The breath hitched in Nico's throat as he voiced his concerns out loud for the first time.

Will gave a grim smile. "Believe me, I'm not such a big fan of death, either," he said, sitting back on his heels. He almost touched his jeans with his gloves but then remembered they were supposed to be sterile so propped his elbows on his thighs instead and sat there with his purple hands floating in the air.

"You look ridiculous."

"You look like a dressmaker's dummy someone forgot about," Will shot back, although there was little humour in his voice.

"So that's it?" Nico asked. "Talk over, just like that?"

"I don't know what else you want me to say," Will said, rubbing his forehead with his forearm. "If the chance comes to nuke Tartarus somehow, I'm going to take it. You'd do the same thing. What about that stupid statue you lugged across the world? That practically killed you and yet you didn't stop."

"That's different."

"How?" Will demanded. "How is it different? Because it was you doing it and not me?"

"Yes." Nico's voice was small. "Yes, okay?"

"So what, you think it's going to be any easier for me to live without you than it will be for you to live without me? That you're expendable somehow?"

"I don't know. All I do know is that I can't do this without you."

"Do what?"

" _Live_ ," Nico said. "I didn't really have anyone before you came along and now I've got you… I don't know what I'm supposed to do without you."

The anger melted off Will's face, deflating his body. He sat back further on his heels, bumping the coffee table another few inches backwards. "You'll be okay," he said.

"No, I won't," Nico replied. "Nothing about this ends with me being okay. If you're gone, then… what? What am I meant to do?"

"Your best," Will suggested. "No matter what, you are going to have an amazing life. Whether I'm there or not. You'll find someone else, Nico. You will."

"I don't want someone else," Nico said. "I want you. That's all I'm ever going to want."

"We don't know anything yet," Will said, leaning forward and picking up the needle again to finish his work before the lidocaine wore off.

"We know one hell of a lot, Will. We know–"

Nico was interrupted by the apartment door bursting open. He had his back to the door, so he turned around to see a fuming Annabeth blocking out the light from the hall. Will bobbed his head up to, blinking at the sudden intrusion.

Annabeth's mouth fell open, taking in Nico's state of undress and Will's position kneeling in front of him. "What the hell is going on here?" she demanded, storming into the apartment. "Did you ditch me at Camp Half-Blood to have a nooner with your boyfriend?!" She was in full Annabeth rage mode now, grey eyes growing stormier by the second.

Will flushed red and stood up. "This is not what it looks like," he said, holding up his bloodied, gloved hands as proof. "I'm patching him up. That's all."

Annabeth was about to demand to know why Nico needed stitching up in the first place when a strange feeling overcame her. She looked down and realised she was standing in a puddle of liquid that she had no explanation for. Then, slowly, her rational brain ate through the anger, which melted away to horror as if it had never been there.

"Oh my gods," she whispered, her eyes blowing wide with panic.

"What?" Nico asked, grabbing his sword from where it was propped next to the couch.

"Guys… I think… I think my water just broke."


	29. December V

December V

* * *

Both Nico and Will wore a look of horror on their faces. Annabeth looked between them desperately, wondering who would be the first to snap it of it and do something. She was going into labour and they were staring at her like idiots.

The baby was coming. Now. Early. Very early. What the hell was she going to do?

"What are you even doing here?" Nico demanded, breaking the silence first. "I thought I left you at Camp?"

"Yeah, standing in the middle of the Big House in my pyjamas with no explanation of what the fuck was happening," Annabeth growled. "Which, thanks, by the way. I took the Camp strawberry delivery van and I'm pretty sure I blew through a red light coming here, so if I get a ticket I am sending it to you, Nico."

Nico massaged the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. "What, and Chiron just let you? That old horse is getting seriously slow. He needs to get out of the wheelchair every now and then."

"Chiron didn't want me to go," Annabeth said. "But he was distracted by a hoard of monsters on the boundaries. I don't think he saw me leave. Now, tell me, what the hell is going on? And if you lie to me, so help me–"

"The prophecy is starting," a Will said. "Which is why you really, really would have been better off at Camp."

Annabeth blinked. The anger disappeared, deflating her like a worn balloon. "Oh," she said.

"Yeah. Big fucking problem," Nico said, shaking his head. "You know Percy is heading there now with every demigod he can find to keep you safe, right? So you've got a bunch of monsters on your tail and all you've got to defend you are some pyjamas, an archer without a bow and someone with a needle and thread sticking out of him. Why didn't you just accept that I was doing the right thing?"

"The eclipse, of course…" Annabeth briefly closed her eyes, the weight of the situation crushing her. Then her eyes snapped open. "Why didn't you tell me?" she demanded. "I think I deserve to have been told?"

"You're on a no stress bed rest kick!" Nico snapped back. "And Rachel's apartment was oozing with monsters. Something tells me that's not a zen environment."

"We're not getting anywhere sniping at each other," Will said, stepping in between them. "Annabeth, go and get yourself freshened up. Nico, sit down. I need to tie off these stitches."

Annabeth's mouth vanished to a thin line and she glared at Nico but did as Will suggested, heading for the bathroom.

"How could she be so dumb?" Nico said, throwing himself down on the couch and hissing as it tugged at his stitches.

"She's right. After everything, she deserved to know," Will said, turning his attention back to Nico's stomach. "Would it have killed you to have said something to her before you dropped her off?"

"There wasn't time," Nico muttered. "As soon as she was safe I headed back to you."

"Sometimes other people should be higher up your list," Will suggested gently, but he didn't push it in case it reignited the argument from earlier.

Nico grunted, although Will wasn't sure if it was in agreement or disagreement. Again he let it fly, picking up the needle and continuing with his stitches.

"Okay, so her waters have just broken. What are we going to do?"

Nico shrugged. "Make a grateful sacrifice to the god of Scotchgarding?"

Will looked up, his eyes nearly bugging out of his head.

"What?" Nico demanded. "Are you telling me the rug isn't Scotchgarded?"

Will smacked Nico upside the head. "Two minutes. It happened two minutes ago. I mean, is that not the very definition of too soon? And who cares about the rug? The baby is coming. The world is ending. Don't you think that's an issue?"

"I like that rug. It's the only good thing that came out of the first and last time I let you drag me to IKEA."

Will rolled his eyes. "You are unbelievable," he said as he tied off the stitches. "There. All done. I guess it's pointless asking you to go easy with them so they don't burst?"

"There is nothing I would like more than to take it easy," Nico said. "And yet..."

"Right," Will said grimly, taking off his gloves. "We need to get Percy back here with everyone else. We can't risk moving Annabeth again with shadow travel now she's in labour. Who knows what would happen. She needs to get to a hospital. She's gone into premature labour. We're just going to have to defend her there."

"Because hospitals are notoriously impenetrable fortresses," Nico muttered. "Ones that no one ever just walks into."

"If you've got a better plan I am all ears," Will said, banging closed the first aid chest. "But I checked my phone earlier and I have zero service. I'm guessing that's something to do with Tartarus. So someone is going to have to go after Percy themselves."

Nico hissed and pulled his own phone out of his pocket, resisting the urge to throw it across the room when it displayed no bars. He cracked enough screens as it was. "Great," he said. "Just great."

By the time Annabeth came out of the bathroom, Will had gone and Nico was standing by the window. His sword was drawn and he was peaking through the blinds. He'd put on another one of his never ending supply of black shirts.

"There are monsters gathering outside," he said. "We need to move now." He glanced back at Annabeth. "Why have you changed into Will's sweatpants?"

"Because I couldn't fit into any of your clothes because you are not a normal sized human being and I have a normal sized human being inside of me!" Annabeth bit out, jabbing both of her index fingers towards her swollen stomach.

"Well. Not for much longer."

"You better get me to a hospital fast for your sake as well as mine because you are going to need more medical attention than me in about three seconds when I jam my foot up your ass. Where's Will?"

"He went to find Percy."

Annabeth stormed across the room and grabbed a fistful off Nico's t-shirt. With her teeth gritted so hard it was making her jaw scream in protest and almost entirely trapping the words in her mouth, she ground out, "You sent the non-shadow travelling medic away to find my husband when I'm just about to give birth?"

Nico reached up to try and loosen her fingers; they were gripping like vices. He gulped, the anger radiating from her in palpable waves, rendering her almost a mirror image of her mother. "Look, Will and I both agreed that given the current situation if there are more monster attacks while you're giving birth I'm better able to protect you than he is until Percy gets here."

Annabeth mulled that over for a while; her fingers gradually relaxed on Nico's shirt. He staggered away from her, rubbing at his neck when the collar of his shirt had bit into him.

"If you're done trying to kill me I need to save your life," Nico said. He paused. "Wait, is this irony? I'm never sure."

"How the hell are we meant to get to the hospital when there's monsters camped out on the doorstep?"

"We're going down to the parking garage," Nico said. "Someone's going to lend us their car."


	30. December VI

Will gripped the steering wheel of Camp's delivery van so hard his knuckles glowed white. The traffic inched forward and it was all he could do not to veer up onto the sidewalk to skirt around it.

How the hell was he supposed to get out of the city and all the way to Camp in time? Percy had a huge head start on him, even with picking up various demigods along the way.

The cars in front ground to a halt and he thumped the steering wheel in frustration.

His phone was a useless lump of glass and metal and he didn't feel much better himself, except he was made of flesh. What was he supposed to do to help? Like Nico had said, he was an archer without a bow right now. He couldn't summon the dead. He couldn't create hurricanes or tsunamis. The only thing he could do right now was patch people up after they'd already been hurt.

The traffic had snarled up right beside of the southern entrance to Central Park. He glanced over at the Sherman Monument, still glittering gold despite the eclipse's twilight.

Why was there so much traffic? Had people sensed that something was about to go down and were trying to flee the city? Was there some kind of thrill about being out and about during an eclipse that he was missing?

Before he'd left the apartment, Nico's last words to him had been an attempt to extract a promise not to do anything stupid. Will swallowed hard. He'd never actually made the promise, but he still felt as guilty as all Hades anyway for what he was thinking.

It would be betraying the last frantic kisses Nico had snatched from his lips before shoving him out the door to find Percy, but maybe that was necessary. Maybe that's what had to be done.

Everyone had their destiny. Children of Apollo knew that better than most. Maybe this was his. Maybe he'd been born to stop Tartarus' rise and save Percy and Annabeth's baby.

The prophecy was pretty cut and dry — it didn't feel like there were riddles hidden in this one that they were going to have to wrack their brains over. He knew it. They all knew it, really, underneath. Who was he to delay fate?

And anyway, in the unlikely event that they'd got this hideously wrong, that this wasn't his destiny, he couldn't live with himself if he didn't at least _try_. Not that there'd be much of a life to live if Tartarus ruled the earth, but there'd be a lot of people he'd have to watch die, people he loved, and there was no way he was going to sit by and watch knowing that he could have done something to stop it if he'd just _tried._

He took a shaky breath in and exhaled again, digging around in his pocket for his phone and clicking the lock button to open it up. Still no bars, but his wallpaper was a selfie of him with Nico in Times Square last New Years Eve.

Neither of them had seen the ball drop before in person despite living in the city for most of their lives (for Nico casino excluded), so they'd made a date last year to see it.

The crowd had been ridiculous and the night freezing. Their cheeks glowed in the picture and the left hand side of the frame was slightly blurred grey as Will's gloved thumb had protruded onto the lens.

Nico's lips had been cold that night when Will had kissed him to welcome in the new year.

They were just days away from it being a year since that photo had been taken, and unless he did something no one would ever capture that moment again. For anyone. New York would be ground zero in a monster plague that would spread across the country. Across the _world_.

The traffic started to move. Will ignored it. Angry beeps punctured the air behind him, but he didn't care.

He wrenched on the wheel, gunned the engine and the van shot across the road. With a squeak and an ominous crunch from the suspension it bumped up onto the sidewalk. Killing the engine with a flick of his wrist, Will stepped out of the van, leaving the keys in the ignition.

There wouldn't be any use for them where he was going.

Balling his fists, he made his way towards Central Park. Normally crowded with horses and carriages and wandering tourists, the plaza was eerily empty as he crossed it. An empty takeout box skittered across the sidewalk in an ominous breeze that disturbed the branches of the trees, making them wave and groan.

The darkness beneath those branches was tangible as he crossed the threshold into the park. It was more than just gloom; it had thick, soupy, ink-black tendrils that coiled around him as he entered. It obscured his feet and billowed across his line of vision.

There were whispers in the darkness, hissing at him to turn back, to give up, that he was nothing more than a pathetic failure of a human being.

No wonder the park was deserted.

Ignoring the whispers, he pressed on into the darkness.

From nowhere, a dracaena popped into existence out of the shadows. Will sensed the appearance before he saw it and turned automatically, his hand outstretched. A white-hot blast of light burst from his palm and incinerated the monster before it could take a single step towards him.

Will looked down at his hand. It was bright red and still smoking, but he shrugged and pushed on through the darkness.

Again the gloom roiled and a spear shot towards him. It juddered to a halt an inch from piercing his sternum and bobbed there like a boat in a harbour. He glared at it and it flipped over end and vanished back into the dark. A startled bark confirmed it had hit the telkhine that had fired it.

Fuck this. Fuck everything. It didn't matter if they resorted to throwing kitchen sinks at him, he was going to make it. Nothing was going to stop him reaching the Door of Orpheus and cracking open the entrance to the Underworld — the world couldn't afford to lose any more time.

Underneath him the asphalt was cracked and icy; his shoes slid hopelessly as they tried to maintain grip.

The air was frigid and still. His breath hung in front of him in a cloud. He shivered, dug his fingernails into his palms, and pressed on.

The silence shattered, falling in shreds around Will's head. Squawking almost deafened him; he clapped his hands over his ears as from above a flock of Stymphalian Birds bore down on him. He threw himself onto the ground as one dive-bombed him, slicing clean through his scalp and sending a trickle of warm blood down the side of his head.

Will hissed in pain and rolled over; the air was full of bronze beaks glinting in the gloom, sparking as they snapped closed. He swiped blood out of his eye and as his elbow came up to do so one of the Birds tore into the elbow of his jacket, leaving it in tatters.

"That was _expensive_ ," he growled. A flash of fire flashed over his eyes and with a roar and _whumph_ of ignition an arc of flame burst into the sky.

Glowing bronze beaks bounced and clattered to the asphalt; bald, sizzling birds (nicely bronzed) followed with wet thuds.

Will got to his feet and dusted himself off. As he did so, his fingers brushed against the hunk of metal on a chain around his neck. It had fallen out from under his shirt when he threw himself on the floor.

Nico's skull ring grinned up at him, the twin onyx stones in the eye sockets reflecting the orange light of the singed feathers which continued to flutter out of the sky like burning snow.

He should leave this somewhere easy for them to find — no doubt Nico would want it back — because he didn't know what state he'd be in when he was done. There may not even be anything left, and this wasn't his to take with him.

But he wasn't ready to part with it yet. He needed it. He needed to remember why he was doing this. So he wrapped his fist around it like it was a talisman — a monster would have to pry it from his cold dead hands — and stepped further from the light.


End file.
